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SYMBOLS OF THE CAPITAL; 



CIVILIZATION IN NEW YORK. 



A. D. ''mayo. 




NEW YORK: 
T-IT^TCIIER. & H XJ T O H I I^ S O I^ 

523 (ST. NICHOLAS HOTBX) BROADWAY. 
1 S 5 9 . 






Emtkrkd aoeorJing to Act of Congress, in the j'ear 1S69, by 

THATCHER & HHTCHINSON, 

In the Cloik's Office of the District Cuurt of tiie rTiiileil St.it.^s, for the Southern District of New Ycrk. 



k 



W. H, TiNsoN, Stereotyper anj Printer, 
Rear of 43 A 45 Centre street, N. Y. 



PREFACE 



The subject of the following pages is American 
Civilization, as symbolized by the institutions of the 
chief State in the Republic. ISTo State so completely 
represents the characteristic tendencies of society in 
our country as 'New York. Superior to all others hi 
population, wealth and executive power ; containing 
a representative of every style of character and abil- 
ity at w^ork in our new confederacy; closely linked 
with every interest in the Union; its condition is, 
perhaps, the best mirror in which we can behold the 
reflection of our present progress, and the obstacles 
that hinder our more rapid advancement. 

The writer has selected the chief representative 
institutions of the capital city of New York, as sug- 
gestive of what life should be in every free common- 



IV PREFACE. 

wealth. The work is, therefore, concerned with local 
themes, only as they lead the mind to the considera 
tion of the great privileges and obligations of Ameri- 
can citizenship. It is a sincere endeavor to aid the 
young men and women of our land in their attempt 
to realize a character that shall justify our professions 
of rej)ublicanism, and to establish a civilization which, 
in becoming national, shall ilhistrate every principle 
of a pure Christianity. 



COE^TENTS 



PAGS 
THE nUDSON ; OR, LIFE IN THE COUNTRY, .... "7 



11. 

THE CAPITAL CITY; OR, SOCIETY IN TOWN, .... 35 

III. 

THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR, 65 

IV. 

MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS, 95 

V. 

THE GOLD DOLLAR, 119 

VI. 

THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND THE OBSERVATORY, . . . 143 



VI CONTENTS. 



PEDANTUY AND POWER, 173 



VIII. 

THE CAPITOL AND THE HIGHER LAT^, 195 

IX. 

THE studios; or, art in NETV YORK, 223 

X. 

THE PJ-MFENTIARY; OR, CRIME IN NEW YORK, . . . 247 

XI. 

woman IN AMERICA, 275 

XII. 

THE CHURCHES ; OR, RELIGION IN NEW YORK, . . . 313 

XIII. 

THE RURAL CEMETERY ; OR, LIFE AND DEATH, . . , 343 



SYMBOLS OF THE CAPITAL. 



THE HUDSON 



LIFE IN THE COUNTRY, 

There are many great rivers on the western conti- 
nent ; but nowhere within a valley of three hun- 
dred miles is there such an appeal to the love of 
nature and the higher love of man, as in the glo- 
rious region of the Hudson. Its springs hide 
themselves amid the secrets of that mysterious 
wilderness, whose " cloud-splitting " summit soars 
above a wide sweeping circle of primitive woods 
and hills, and glistening lakes and streams, with a 
faint gleam of civilization quivering in the far-off 
horizon. Within the broad bay, where its majes- 
tic tide lapses into the Atlantic, are reflected the 



8 



masts of a commerce that searches the ends of the 
earth, and the spires of that city which represents 
in all its wondrons phases the new civilization of 
the western world. Midway between the Adiron- 
dack and the ocean, scaling the hills and nestling 
amid the ravines of its snperb shores, rises the 
Capital City of the greatest Republican State. And 
every mile of its joyous current above, or its stately 
tide below, is crowded with nature's grandeur or 
loveliness. Whether it reflects the swelling hills 
and wooded islands that smile over its marriage 
with the beautiful Mohawk ; or lingers reverently 
where the Catskills build their sapphire wall, 
terrace above terrace, along the western sky ; or 
washes the lazy feet of old quiet villages, and 
foams around the wharves of busy towns ; or ghdes 
by fertile fields that scale broad eastern uplands, 
shining like gardens of Paradise in the light of the 
sinking sun; or ripples at the end of shadowed 
paths, that lead to the embowered homes of culture 
and wealth and worth; or writhes through the 
girding Highlands ; or diffuses itself in inland bays ; 
or rolls by the solemn Palisades, to breast the 
ascending waves of the sea ; its journey is every- 
where a jubilee ; the triumphal march of nature 
out of her primeval wilderness to her mystic union 
with the noblest works of man. 



LIFE IN THE COUNTET. 9 

For glorious as may be this valley of the Hud- 
son, yet around the least man that looks npon its 
waves, or treads its soil, lingers a charm as far 
above the magic of forest and snnset as the sky is 
lifted above the gromid — the charm of an immor- 
tal spiritual existence. And nature's splendor 
along these three hundred wondrous miles is but 
a faint type of the grandeur of that human des- 
tiny wrought out amid her scenes. Two hundred 
and fifty years ago the little ship " Half Moon " 
first disturbed the waters of this unknown stream, 
bearing the heroic navigator whose name it has 
inherited. Seven years later a trading-post arose 
on one of its islands, and in 1623 were laid the 
foundations of Albany, the second town in those 
original colonies whose revolt from England cre- 
ated our Republic. Its junction wdth the sea wit- 
nessed the ceremonies that sealed its transmission 
to the English power in 1664 ; while on the region 
washed by its northern waters, the tide of French 
invasion w^as met and broken by the united bravery 
of 'New York and 'Ne^v England. Along its de- 
voted banks ebbed and flowed the wave of the 
Revolutionary struggle ; on the plains of Saratoga 
was struck the decisive blow that broke the spell 
of British success ; under the shadows of the High- 
lands watched and thought and commanded our 



10 THE HUDSON ; OR, 

"Washington ; here, at the end of the long and 
drearj war, was disbanded the arnij of the Thir- 
teen Independent States ; and in full view of its 
waters was the Father of his Country inaugurated 
first President of the Republic. 

Just fifty years ago Robert Fulton opened its 
second great era of human interest, and stowed in 
the hull of his little steamer, that crawled up to 
Albany, were the mighty agencies of civilization 
that have changed this wilderness to the garden 
valley it has become. Thrice since that day has 
the mighty West reached out a long arm and 
seized its shores with a giant grasp ; and now, 
along these avenues of wave and iron, surges the 
noise of nations going to their destiny beyond our 
sinking sun ; while the genius of 'New England, 
from her long line of mountain ridges, looks down 
with hope and j)ride into its fruitful valleys. New 
York has arisen, like a city in a fairy tale, repre- 
sentative of the best and the w^orst of American life ; 
and in the ofiices and halls of the buildings that 
crown the hills of Albany, has been elaborated the 
policy that has brought our State to its eminent 
position among the communities of men. 

In all the elements of human interest no river 
can surpass our own ; for while the plains of the 
Tiber and the Danube reflect the lingering glories 



LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. 11 

of empires that have gone, or totter on the giddy 
summit of desj^otic misrule, and the Seine and the 
Thames mirror the beat results of that civilization 
based on the contempt for the natural rights of man, 
our Hudson is stirred from her Atlantic wave to 
her mountain springs by the great conflict of free- 
dom for the soul. Though the cannon of the old 
Kevolution no longer awake the echoes of our liills, 
yet the American revolution now rages at its full 
nocn-tide heat along these valleys ; and when the 
armies of this revolution are disbanded on its 
shores, from the Capital City must go forth the joy- 
ous word that declares the people of the Empire 
State free from political oppression, and the more 
subtle tyranny of superstition, and the deadliest 
slavery of ignorance and social degeneracy. So 
does our Hudson flow towards the future, bearing 
on its swelling waves the hopes of a longing world 
for the final emancipation of man. x\nd most fit- 
ting is it that the moral teacher who would point to 
the signs in the eastern heavens of this coming day 
of light and love should stand in the Capital City, 
of the most powerful commonwealth in the great 
republic, and make it, through its chief representa- 
tive institutions, preach those Christian lessons 
that are the essence of the best culture of our time. 
But as the cities that fill our lovely valley are 



12 THE HUDSON; OE, 

enfolded and shadowed on every hand by the coun- 
try, so is their glory only representative, and they 
are only what they are made by those who till the 
plains, and toil npon the hillsides that stretch 
away from ns to the limits of onr State. Along 
the banks of the Hudson the cities and villages 
are but dots ; while the country is the ever present 
object of view. Therefore let our estimate of the 
forces that cluster in the Capital City be prefaced 
by an estimate of the country life of our great State. 
With the Hudson for a text, let the teacher speak 
of the capabilities of that country life for the pro- 
duction of a civilization which shall be the Amer- 
ican version of Christ's kingdom of heaven among 
men. 

Every wise observer of the affairs of the Repub- 
lic must confess that our hope of a Christian 
Democracy is in the country life of the nation. 
America cannot be ruled by her great cities except 
by the substitution of the interests of a class for 
the elevation of the whole. The influence of our 
great capitals is comparatively small in the array 
of public forces. In the southern half of the Union 
they are an insignificant element of power. The 
West has extemporized huge villages in the wilder- 
ness which, spite of their metropolitan pretensions, 
are only commercial depots erected by the irame- 



LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. 13 

diate ^vants of a develo^^ing coimtrj. Even tlie 
older cities of the East, not excepting 'New York, 
are still gigantic caravansaries, so llnctuating in 
their population and tendencies that they cannot 
be estimated as a fixed power in the State. Their 
wealth, cnlture and moral enterprise are rivalled 
bj thousands of smaller towns, bound together by 
rail-track and telegraph, which represent in turn a 
country popnlation of landholders and indepen- 
dent laborers such as the world never before saw ; 
and whose enlightened watchfulness will not per- 
mit the conceit of citizen aristocracy, or the 
brutality of citizen barbarism to dictate terms to 
our new civilization. While therefore the man of 
mature power may choose a city platform on 
which to work the machinery of his influence, yet 
his mission is not so much among the fickle crowds 
of the towns as out among the villages and 
farms. "Whoever can make his mark deep and 
broad over the hills and fields of our Empire 
State can well afford to dispense with the homage 
paid by the metropolitan fashion of the hour to 
its favorite; for whatever idea of life rules the 
country must inevitably shape the destiny of the 
republic. 

In speaking of country life we shall therefore 
avoid that greenness in which the hackneyed citi- 



14 



zen so often clothes liimself when pronouncing his 
oracles for the entertainment of his rnral brethren. 
We shall avoid that sentimental Arcadian view 
which lures joung ladies and gentlemen, deep in the 
mysteries of pastoral poetry and the latest mode^ 
to invade the rural districts in midsummer, and 
display their innocent and verdant fancies for the 
entertainment of the farmers' sons and the village 
housewives; for though a pardonable hallucina- 
tion in certain seasons of early adolescence, this 
pastoral view of country life can be dismissed by 
grown uj) men and women without serious damage 
to their mental integrity. "We must also avoid the 
notion of a section of the mercantile world, whose 
views of the country have imiformly been through 
the telescope of speculation, and to whom the 
whole continent outside the pavement resolves 
itself into a universe of mill privileges, mercantile 
agencies, ups and downs of breadstuffs, and pro- 
spective corner-lots in cities yet hovering in the 
air. Equally useless for our purpose is that idea 
which painfully occupies the soul of the retired 
man of the town, who having recovered from the 
excitement of building his palace on the most 
inaccessible hill in the country, awakes to the direful 
apprehension that he has put himself into a fort- 
ress and must spend the remainder of his davs in 



LITE m THE COrNTRY. 15 

foraging for supplies of food and fuel and society. 
It is becoming qnite nnnecessaiy to dispel the fond 
dream of the city ecclesiastic or politician, that on 
the pulling of a certain wire above the chair of 
his sanctum whole districts of agricultural patriots 
and saints will dance most vigorously to his tune, 
since the cry of both these gentlemen is now to gods 
and men for relief against the oppression of these 
dwellers on farms who are bent on making their 
vocation a sinecure. We can do justice to the 
artistic view of country life and still understand 
that the chief end of the laborer or village maid 
is not to figure in a smock-frock or flower-decked 
flat in his charming landscape. In contemplating 
the country life of l^ew York, such views must 
only be considered as glimpses of the real w^orld, 
like those caught while swiftly crossing one of 
the hill streets of the Capital City. But we shall 
transport ourselves to the homes of the people, and 
consider the case of those, who, born into the 
whole circle of country toils, trials and advanta- 
ges, will live and die outside of city walls. How 
does life appear to this vast majority of the Ameri- 
can people ; what opportunities aid and what hin- 
derances discourage their eflbrts for Christian 
manhood ; and how shall they solve the radical 
problem of our national destiny; — to combine 



16 THE HUDSON ; OK, 

individual freedom in everj department of human 
existence with the duties of a citizen in our great 
general confederacy of independent States ? 

The advantages of country life will always bear 
repeating. First is health, which must deteriorate 
amid the poisonous vapors and artificial habits that 
now make our cities the graveyards of so much 
youth and beauty imported from the fields. !N"ext 
is physical comfort, for a sober man will prefer the 
country where all things grow for his support and 
he can afi*ord to be a hospitable neighbor to the 
city, where every addition of. outward happiness 
must be bargained for and dearly bought. Better 
still is the opportunity for personal consideration 
in a community that soon understands the real 
worth of its every member and assigns him the 
position his character demands, while the city 
must to a great degree live in ignorance of 
character, and promote men and women accord- 
ing to their strength in achieving a special success. 
The alternation of labor and leisure in the life of 
the farmer or dweller in villages secures time for 
mental imj)rovement, and if the masses in the 
country are not more enlightened in literature than 
the overdriven and excited crowds that throng the 
pavement, it is their own deep disgrace. Art is the 
advantage of the town, but in the present state of 



LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. IT 

American art and manners we shall not be thought 
singular if we maintain that the privilege of look- 
ing from one of the hills that overshadow the valley 
of the Hudson, or contemplating the pictures framed 
by the window-sash of the householder among the 
western lakes, is superior to the attraction of a re- 
served seat at the Academy of Music, a ticket to the 
Art Galleries, a promenade down Broadway, or a 
carriage once a fortnight, with the invitation to 
occupy six square inches of an uptown saloon, for 
two fearful hours contending for personal safety in 
a mob of dress coats and a wilderness of crinoline. 
And when the lover of Christianity is brought to 
know the unveracities and obscenities and inhuman- 
ities that deep below deep undermine our gilded 
metropolitan life, he will see that the hope of a 
purer religion in America is given to those whose 
independent country life makes social servility and 
moral depravity an unpardonable offence. The 
sum of this advantage is that in the country the 
individual man is a more prominent object in the 
landscape of life than in the city : and while cor- 
porations and institutions are the rulers of the 
town it is easier for the dweller with nature to pos- 
sess himself and decide the great American prob- 
lem between man and the state according to his 
best intelligence. 



18 THE HUDSON ; OR, 

Y et in many sections of the country there are 
great drawbacks to these advantages. The mono- 
tony of lonely life often stupefies rather than 
deepens the character. The want of society repre- 
senting varied interests and styles of thought may 
easily breed a conceit of superiority, which, alter- 
nating with the shyness of pride nourished in 
seclusion, sliuts the door on improvement. The 
lack of that indefinable power we call manner or 
personal presence, which few can preserve away 
from intercourse with all varieties of people, is a 
great hinderance to the reserved countryman. The 
absence of these powerful excitements which awake 
the latent energies and introduce a man to himself is 
also injurious to many a sleepy soul that suns its 
life away on green banks and lets natui-e over- 
power and demoralize the will. The remoteness 
from the centres of concentrated influence often 
begets a mischievous de23endence in thought and 
habit. There is danger that the rural mind will 
fall into the ruts, and live and die unconscious of 
its decided advantages of position; and many a 
one has doubtless been galvanized into a noble 
manhood by the shocks of city life, who would 
have glided down the slow current of a country 
career hardly disturbing the waters till the final 
plunge. 



LIFE IN THE COUNTEY. 19 

The upsliot of this controversy between country 
and town is, that each has great advantages for a 
strong souL It is time that onr people were de- 
livered from the cant that agriculture is an essen- 
tially ennobling pursuit, and that one has only to 
live in a farmhouse to be a worthy man. Selfish- 
ness as withering, meanness and craft as belittling, 
sensuality as brutalizing as any that dwells in city 
courts, often curses the farmer's home. ISTeither 
the land nor. the pavement makes the man, but 
a high spirit makes both the theatre of life's 
grandest achievement. Every honest and useful 
profession is good for the best uses of the soul. 
Labor is not confined to the field or the shop, but 
is the severe angel that stands by the elbow of him 
who thinks, or traffics, or guides society, and when- 
ever welcomed bestows her great rewards. Both 
countrymen and citizen need less false pride in 
their profession, more just pride to make that pro- 
fession the means of human elevation. The best 
product of the farm and plantation is not wheat 
and cotton, but man ; and our teeming prairies and 
rich uplands will only become a curse, unless the 
world values the planter above his bales, and the 
farmer beyond his grains. The especial need of 
the great agricultural classes in this land is more 
self-respect, founded not on their grounds, but on 



20 THE HUDSON ; OE, 

tlieii" nature as souls created in tlie image of God ; 
and along with tMs a more rational estimate of 
their great opportunities to cultivate the best char- 
acter in their position, with an unobtrusive inde- 
pendence in forming their habits of life on the basis 
of the country. A sham city in the rural districts 
is a painful sight which too often offends the eyes 
of the American. For, just now, commerce is flaunt- 
ing her sudden successes and intolerable follies of 
luxmy in the eyes of the country, inflaming young 
men with the aspiration to exchange the honors of 
health and independence at home for slavery and 
effeminacy in the town ; and changing the good 
old race of country women into feeble imitators of 
the fashion plates, who sigh among the groves and 
gardens of the Hudson for the splendors of Broad- 
way millinery and the exhausting pleasures of a 
city career. When our country youth come to 
their senses, and with no affectation of contempt 
for the town, devote themselves to the growth of 
their own manhood and womanhood in the ample 
spaces of their enviable lot, we shall be nearer the 
end of our American Revolution, and see more 
clearly how to organize upon our prairies, and 
river banks, and mountain sides, that Christian 
freedom of which they are the magnificent types 
and shadows. 



LIFE IN THE COUNTKY. 21 

This idea of a life of Christian independence, 
amid the circumstances of the conntry wonld, 
donbtless, introduce extensive reforms in every 
department of rural existence. Beginning in the 
unobtrusive freedom of good families, it wonld 
gradually make its way through neighborhoods 
and districts, till the whole aspect of conntry life 
wonld be elevated and refined. 

First, it wonld remodel the physical arrange- 
ments of many of onr country friends, and inaugu- 
rate a style of living which would secure a larger 
degree of health and comfort. It is melancholy 
that a people with such abundant means for health 
and comfort as the rural population of ITew York, 
should so often pervert the benevolent gifts of God 
into curses. Besides the intemperance in the use 
of alcoholic drinks, and that poisonous weed whose 
vile mark is seen over the whole face of America, 
there is a great neglect of the simplest laws of 
dress, diet, housing and labor by our country folks, 
which is laying the seeds of permanent physical de- 
generacy. Our capricious climate demands per- 
petual watchfulness, and the habit of reckless ex-. 
posure, which in men is the result of carelessness, 
and in women of imitation of city fashions, lies at 
the foundation of our declining health. One would 
suppose that the daughters of the most intelligent 



22 THE HUDSON ; OK, 

nation of farmers in the world would perceive 
the folly of arraying themselves in apparel which 
can hardly be excused in the drawing-rooms of the 
cities, and braving the terrors of a 'New York win- 
ter and the caprice of its spring and summer with 
the gossamer contrivances denominated fashionable 
shoes and hats and drapery ; but the country wo- 
men dress on the whole, more unsuitably for their 
exposure than those of the city. As a result, fe- 
male health, the source of national health, is at a 
fearfully low ebb in our villages and rural districts. 
Tlie wholesome preparation of good food, and the 
method of eating and drinking are yet an unknown 
science to millions of our countrymen. We know 
the depth and breadth of this stolid American pre- 
judice against the religion of the kitchen. Many 
a family that worships God sincerely in morning 
and evening devotions is poisoning itself by a trans- 
gression of His laws around its daily table. The 
greed for more land often keeps the home of the 
farmer destitute of many essentials to the healthy 
education of the family. The habits of toil un- 
cheered by amusements, or the higher culture of 
the soul, cut short the days of hosts of our earnest 
countrymen. We cannot suggest the details of this 
physical reformation. It will come when the more 
sensible inhabitants of every district begin to think 



LIFE IN THE COUNTKY. 23 

of the best way to prolong life and increase com- 
fort in their particular locality. 

Every state and region has peculiarities of cli- 
mate and circumstance to which the physical habits 
must be adjusted. We have outgrown the primi- 
tive pioneer life which hardened the bodies of our 
ancestors; we must live in a more elegant style 
than they ; and the question for the country people 
in our State is, shall the town tailors, milliners, 
architects and cooks, dress your sons and daughters, 
build your houses, spread your tables, and dictate 
habits of labor and amusement, after some wretched 
imitations of old world folly ; or will you exercise 
3^our own common sense in the premises, build 
your house to suit the country, dress according to 
the peculiar exposure, eat and drink what will keep 
you in the best state of health and sj)irits, and 
play as rational experience demands ? The ques- 
tion is vital ; for life out of town will never be the 
noble and cheering thing it can be while it drags 
after it this lengthening chain of American dietetic 
abuse, beginning in the farmhouse and ending in 
the hells of city debauchery and crime. 

The next element of success in country life is the 
proper regulation of labor. Notwithstanding the 
boast of American Free Institutions, the American 
idea of work is still deplorably low. In half the 



24 THE HUDSON ; OK, 

nation the laborer is a slave. Mucli of our northern 
labor is still in the bonds of ignorance and degrada- 
tion ; better than slavery or serfdom chiefly because 
the laborer is a citizen and has an outlook for his 
posterity, who, by the blessings of a free education, 
can hope to rise above the life-long di'udging of 
their fathers. In large districts of our State work 
is still the curse of Adam, and thousands of our 
toiling people on the land and in mechanical em- 
ployments have not dreamed of what labor is to be 
under the transforming influence of a Christian 
civilization. Intelligent work is ennobling; but 
perpetual drudgery is a terrible calamity. The 
way out of this prison-house of unremitting toil for 
a mere bodily subsistence is not an overturn of 
society or any form of agrarian politics, but the old 
way of spiritual cultivation. The young farmer of 
I^ew York is ofi'ered, in the common school and 
associate advantages, the means of rising above 
ignorance. Science and the mechanic arts are 
toiling to put into his hands machinery that will 
abolish drudgery in the field and home. A suit- 
able practical education will fit any young man or 
woman to use these labor-saving agencies of modern 
agriculture. And when their use is acquired, let 
not the accursed spirit of gain come in and steal 
the leisure they afl'ord for new accumulations. If 



LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. 25 

our coimtrj people will educate themselves to use 
the scientific modes of labor which are the glory 
of our age, and then Temain content with a com- 
petency of goods^ mid devote their leisure to that 
cultivation of the soul which maJces the true citizen 
and Christian^ the life of the farmer will become 
what God intended, and thousands who are now 
driven from its annihilating toils will gladly em- 
brace it. K our working men and women do not 
choose to bend tamely under the tyranny of a 
growing aristocracy that already proclaims the 
odious doctrine that the laborer belongs to the 
landowner, let them give their children the culti- 
vation to use the science of the 19th century to 
beat back the advancing tide of 14:th century serf- 
dom, and prove to the world that labor of the 
hands is one essential quality of the best Christian 
manhood in a republic. 

The despotism of the old world divides society 
into a class of landed gentry and a mob of servile 
laborers. In trying to elevate and equalize man- 
ners in America, we too often imagine that true 
gentility is the imitation of a gentry which is quite 
foreign to our ideas of social life. We are fast 
rising above that rudeness and indelicacy which 
for centuries have been the inheritance of the til- 
lers of the soil ; but our people have not known 

2 



26 THE Hudson; or, 

that America must produce lier own metliods of 
social intercourse, and learn by long experiment to 
blend the freedom of a true individualism with the 
courtesy of a fine reverence for humanity. In our 
escape from the servile j)oliteness and iron conven- 
tionalities of despotic nations, we must endure 
awhile that impudence which excites mingled 
laughter and indignation in our Young America 
school of ]3recocious boys and girls ; but this is not 
to be our national manner. Freedom implies re- 
spect for self, founded on reverence for man, and 
around no one should there hang a finer courte&y 
than the republican gentleman. Not the simplicity 
of ignorance, but of high intelligence ; not the 
overthrow of conventions by unbridled sensuality 
and conceit, but their displacement by the broader 
and freer forms of a better moral culture ; not the 
imitation of finical notions of refined intercourse, 
but the delicacy of pure and trusting lives is to be 
our contribution to the science of human behavior. 
Let the young men and women of our State first 
try to be worthy their great destiny, and then act 
out their best conceptions of social intercourse. 
This accomplished, we need not be ashamed before 
the more elaborate manners of the decaying civili- 
zation of the past. 

Especially in the great problem of amusements 



LIFE IX THE COUNTEY. 27 

let our people be wise in time. Doubtless we have 
toiled too hard and become too stern and joyless 
getting onr nation on its legs ; and now tlie cry for 
a new organization of public and social recreation 
is rising quite too strong to be anathematized out 
of existence. But we are not pleading for the 
importation of that mixture of childish and sensual 
gaiety which charms our staid travellers out of 
their common sense on the continent. For these 
European popular amusements are the river of 
Lethe in which the masses plunge and forget the 
miseries of their actual lot. We want nothing in 
America to steep us in light-hearted indifference to 
our great problem of republican life ; we are not 
far enough along to rejoice immoderately ; w^e have 
no right to revel while the eyes of the world are 
looking on us for an example of self government. 
Thus, while we have no sympathy with asceticism, 
we would still urge simplicity and temperance ; a 
heroic quality in our very sport, a something of 
thoughtful dignity even in our recreations. Our 
national amusements should be based on sincere 
admiration of American nature. We cannot see 
too much of the glorious scenery of our country ; 
journeys, excursions, out-door pleasures will impart 
a tone to the mind, w^hich will mould the pure and 
gentle deliglits of home, and out of our native 



28 THE HUDSON ; OR, 

taste create sometliing more appropriate for public 
entertainment. Let onr villagers and farmers not 
envy the metropolis its exhausting and artificial 
amusements. A majority of those who engage in 
them do not really enjoy or understand them. Let 
them not waste too much money running after city 
spectacles, but organize among themselves the best 
that the taste of the region will afford. Thus, by 
gradual experiment will our people learn the 
cheerfulness due to every citizen. 

The education of the country must rest upon the 
public school as its corner stone. Would that the 
people of New York could know what a wound 
they give their State whenever they neglect this 
great republican institution. With a thorough 
organization of the free-school, and a judicious 
selection of the best public journals, a vigorous 
support of the lecture system untrammelled by 
sectarian or partisan bigotry, and a liberal provision 
of books through town and village libraries, there 
need be no want of mental enlightenment in the 
country. The farmers may have the most leisure 
of any class, and that leisure can be so used as to 
create a deep soil of thoughtful intelligence from 
which will spring genius in all its forms of com- 
manding power. IS'ever was there such a hope of 
mental illumination opened to a people as to the 



LIFE IN THE COrNTKY. 29 

inliabitants of the northern states of America, and 
if the laboring masses of our great State choose to 
ahide in the darkness of ignorance and prejudice 
they will deserve to be governed by the dema- 
gogues who now thrive on their defects and reckon 
on the 90,000 illiterate adults of JSTew York, the 
benighted regions of Pennsylvania, and the shades 
of Egyptian Illinois, as so much capital in their 
infamous speculation upon the rights of humanity. 
Our hope of a pure democracy in America must 
rest upon the country ; not as it is, where wdiole 
districts are led by old prejudices or stolid tradi- 
tions artfully used by politicians who wdeld the 
city press; but as it will be when the laboring 
masses know the history of America and fully 
comprehend the great conflict of ideas by which 
the nation is now shaken. Every good patriot 
must desire that the countiy should be the chief 
power in the State, not because a man who drives 
a plough is better than a man who drives a quill, 
rather because there is more hope that the dwellers 
outside of towns will administer government for 
man. There is but one controversy now dividing 
our politics : — Is Government intended to protect 
classes or develo]? mem f For a feudal, a commer- 
cial, a manufacturing, a farming class to. absorb 
the cra-e of the state is equally dangerous and anti- 



30 THE HUDSON ; OK, 

American. Only tliat republicanism will stand 
which proposes the recognition of human rights 
and their protection in a government that leaves to 
the individual the extreme of freedom compatible 
with the present safety of society, while its efforts 
are constantly directed to the wise enlargement of 
this area. And a truly educated rural population 
is better circumstanced to accept and administer 
this American idea than the dwellers in towns. 
In proportion as the millions of our laboring peo- 
ple make themselves capable of forming broad and 
independent judgments in public affairs will the 
occupation of the demagogues be gone, and 
the desperate diseases that now beset the state 
yield to a growing health in the body politic. 

This condition of life in the country can exist 
only on the basis of a personal character founded 
upon that love which eighteen centuries ago was 
declared religion. Yain is the hope to build up a 
civilization in the fields of America which will 
resist the fearful j)ressure of our Eepublican temp- 
tations on other foundations than this. Pride of 
family, public spirit, reverence for our political 
ancestry, the fear of encountering a world-wide 
shame, a jealous and irritable spirit of nationality; 
how easily are such considerations washed down 
the tide of any fierce popular excitement! The 



LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. 31 

citizen of our country is defended by its institutions 
against the forms of danger peculiar to establislied 
despotisms ; but what shall defend him from the 
people, when inflamed by a great delusion, or de- 
bauched by a mighty temptation, it charges down 
on his manhood in a majority swelling like the 
maddened waves of a storm-tossed sea ? Only cha- 
racter based on the everlasting rock of religious 
principle can offer to this onset a granite wall on 
which the popular surge shall be shivered to spray. 
Blessed will be the day when this fact shall be 
acknowledged all over our vast domain; when 
sects in and out of the church shall be stirred by a 
rivalry in righteousness more determined than their 
present warfare for precedence ; when holiness 
shall be regarded the most imperative need of this 
very land wherein we live ; when the widest free- 
dom in the sacred affairs of the soul shall be recon- 
ciled with the most efficient union of all good men 
in behalf of that practical morality which exalteth 
a state; when the heathen sophism that religion 
should be separate from the daily life of the Repub- 
lic, shall be left to those who need it to excuse 
their crimes against God and humanity; when the 
people shall exhibit their reverence for those who 
gained and preserved our heritage by scourging 
corruption, and blasphemy, and inhumanity from 



32 THE HUDSON ; OE, 

all liigh places in the name of that law which 
abides forever. Then will religious institutions, 
severed from all ecclesiastical connection with the 
government, dispense that sacred wisdom which 
shall become the life blood of character and conse- 
crate our fair country to the holiest use of man. 

With such a realization of country life, what a 
new splendor would pervade our glorious valley 
and brood over the mountains and plains of our 
Empire State. Tlien would the farms and villages 
of Is'ew York produce a race worthy to sustain the 
honor of the Republic. Reared amid the inspiring 
influences of nature and taught in the best school 
of youthful discipline, it would pour into our de- 
praved and debilitated cities the life blood of a 
higher civilization. And when the hot, weary day 
of middle age toil was past, how gladly would the 
citizen return to the quiet country, and pass away 
from earth amid the blessings of his childhood's 
home. Where shall this idea be realized if not in 
this valley within whose borders lie all the ap]3li- 
ances of modern life ; where agriculture and com- 
merce embrace ; where the spires of the town are 
never out of sight ; and from every city roof is a 
vision of swelling hills and gleaming waves ? Who 
will not rejoice to dwell in a spot so favored by 
God and man ; and who v/ill not count it the 



LIFE IN THE COUNTKY. 33 

greatest privilege of that lot to make the Hudson, 
now the symbol of all that is beautiful and sublime 
in nature, the higher type of those great and lovely 
elements of character and society which consecrate 
a Christian State. 



2* 



II. 

THE CAPITAL CITY; 

OR 

SOCIETY m TOWN. 

The City of Albany may justly challenge com- 
parison with the inland towns of America, for 
beauty of situation and peculiar historical interest. 
Midway in the lovely valley of the " Great River 
of the Mountains," it scales its triple-headed hill, 
crowned by the Capitol, from whose dome is seen 
a landscape of w^ondrous beauty. The shadowy 
Catskills contend with drifting mountains of clouds 
along her southern horizon, subsiding into the ex- 
quisite azure hues of the Helderberg. Down the 
valley, the Hudson slowly winds its placid way 
around projecting headlands to the distant sea; 
and smiling with cultivated slopes and wooded 
knolls, its western shores ascend to the hills 
whence the mountains of I^ew England are seen 

36 



36 



to welcome the rising sun. All along these eurv 
ing banks, ii]) tliese woodj ascents, and down this 
long, green vale is poured that indescribable at- 
mosphere of magic quiet which lulls the whole 
region, from the Adirondack to the ocean, to a 
calm sleep, startled now and then into the hurried 
dream of a busj town. A hundred thousand people 
are working out the jDroblem of life beneath the 
gazer's eye ; their fret and toil and triumph en- 
folded in this drowsy enchantment of nature. 

Seen from the western hills, the city crowns her 
blended heights with a surpassing grace ; while, 
in her own streets the citizen is arrested in his 
hurried walk by a vision of glittering waves and 
wooded summits and fertile fields, at the end of a 
vista of bricks and pavements. With no preten- 
sions to architectural grandeur, but with much of 
the reality of comfortable housing, healthful air, 
and solid prosperity, the dweller in our ancient 
town should long hesitate before he leaves her 
country-girdled streets for the prison of noisy ways 
and crushing toil, the great cities of our land have 
become. 

And if, while standing in this post of observa- 
tion, the history of our venerable Capital City 
could pass in panorama before our eyes, what re- 
markable changes would excite our admiration. 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 37 

Tlirougli the dim mist of 250 years, we beliold tlie 
" Half Moon," Hendrick Hudson, master, crawling 
along the shores, gazed at bj savages surprised in= 
to the mood of gentle children. Six years pass, and 
above the low flats of yonder island rises a Dutch 
trading-house- — 26 by 36, stockaded fifty feet square, 
with its moat of eighteen feet, bristling with a few 
iron and stone guns, garrisoned by the ten men 
who have now become the 100,000 that people this 
area of ten miles. Anon the trading-house becomes 
a fort, first nestling where steamboats now do con- 
gi^egate, then bravely climbing the hill and laying 
its corner-stone as high as the roof of the pre- 
sent St. Peter's church. " Another seven years 
finds the father of many Patroons the owner of his 
princely estate, stretching from the great Colioes 
Falls, twenty-four miles on either side of the river ; 
and lovelier manor never cheered the heart of 
feudal lord. In twelve years more the first minister 
of Christianity arrives and the germ of the most an- 
cient church is planted. Tlie little village of 
Beaverwyck, clustering beneath its fort, becomes 
the scene of fierce conflict, and violent hands from 
Manhattan tear down the flag of feudal proprietor- 
ship, and lay the foundations of the Corporation of 
Albany in the first court here instituted. J^ot long 
after the English power becomes supreme, in 1661, 



38 THE CAPITAL city; or, 

and in 1668 our town becomes the first char- 
tered citj in the United States of America ; yet 
thirty years more will scarcely suffice to bring her 
a thousand citizens. 

E'ow look ahead three-fourths of a century, and 
you behold our slow Capital City, in 1745, laced up 
in a stockade, lying on the hill-side like a pear, 
whose stem is the fort opposite St. Peter's, and 
whose base is washed by the river. Garrulous old 
Peter Kalm strays up here, gets hooted in the 
streets by the boys for his French fashions, goes off 
" in a huff," and tells sad stories about the little 
Dutch town on the borders of the interminable wil- 
derness. Its quiet is often disturbed by the bustle 
of public affairs ; a shudder runs through its drowsy 
streets as the news of French and Indian invasions 
come through the woods ; here encamp and equip 
the armies that are to hurl back the successive 
waves that rolled from the St. Lawrence, only to 
spend themselves in the woods above; here con- 
gregate the colonial governors to deliberate on 
American taxation ; and not a quarter of a century 
later the old town laughed outright as the famous 
procession, inaugurating the adoption of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, swept from the fields 
about Watervliet, to the big tent on the hill. 

"We look again at the beginning of tli^ present 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 39 

century, and behold a village of five thousand peo- 
ple, ten streets and lanes, one public hotel and six 
lumdred houses, chiefiy, according to the authority 
of the great Dr. Morse, " with their gable ends 
towards the streets." The pine groves close in this 
little provincial paradise; the brambles and wild 
roses clamber up the sides of the ravines, the three 
"kills" sing down their steep beds, the willows 
and tall elms line the river bank, half a hun- 
dred sloops stir the waters of the river ; the pa- 
triarchs sit on their "stoops," along the sacred 
way of Pearl street, now and then pondering the 
meaning of a strange apparition of Yankeedom 
urging its sleds through the February snows to the 
" far west " of central JSTew York — twelve hundred 
sleds in three days, 'Q.ye hundred in one day. 

But the sentence of doom for the quiet old town 
has been pronounced ; she is now the Capital City 
of the Republic of 'New York. Strong as were 
the first two centuries of her life, they are 
absorbed into the wider civilization of the State. 
As we look now we behold a modern city growing 
in wealth, honor, arts and industry, like a hundred 
cities of the republic in all save its representative 
capacity as the political capital of its chief state. 
Would that the genius of America that has 
changed this village of five thousand to a valley 



40 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OR, 

full of one hundred thousand and swept away the 
very landmarks of its old days, could have spared 
at least one street to remind us of the most pecu- 
liar civilization of our past. But they are gone, 
thouo:h the solid virtues that dwelt under these 
quaint gables are inwrought into the texture of 
our public and private life, an imperishable strand 
of that 'New York into which all the nationalities 
of earth are braided. 

But it is not of the Albany of the past or 
present, in itself considered, that we speak ; rather 
of Albany regarded first, as the ty23e of city life in 
our land ; and secondly, as containing those public 
institutions which represent the best civilization of 
our republic. To the first of these considerations, 
Society in town as contrasted with life in the coun- 
try^ attention is now invited. 

While we regret the entire obliteration of our city 
of half a century ago, and contrast the present 
capital of New York with the cities of the old 
world, rich in monumental tokens and venerable 
associations of the long gone past, we must still 
congratulate ourselves on the cause. The reason of 
this obliteration of old landmarks is not that we are 
peculiarly vandalic in our rage for improvement, 
but that a^n American city is essentially a different 
thing from an European caj^ital. The old cities 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 41 

abroad are the growth of another state of human 
affairs, and represent quite another phase in the his- 
tory of human progress than our own. Tliej were 
the centres of imperial influence ; a court, a palace, 
a royal army, with the peculiar results of such 
institutions, made them the centres of permanent 
attraction. Here, too, were the famous seats of 
the ecclesiastical power that held the monarchy in 
check, and spite of its corruption, w^as for centuries 
the best thing in Europe. And most significant of 
all, the continental cities were the cradle of free- 
dom, where the mercantile and industrial interest 
first rallied and beat back the insolent feudalism 
that ruled over the broad country in the shape of a 
barbarous nobility; and in the independence of 
the English and German towns laid the corner 
stone of the liberty we to-day enjoy. And here 
were the great foundations of learning and culti- 
vation in the universities, scholars and artists, that 
are the real sovereigns of modern times. Thus an 
European city is a nation within a nation, a con- 
glomeration of institutions rooted in the soil of 
centuries, firmly interlaced into a corporate struc- 
ture that resists the convulsions of ages. What 
wonder that Kome, Paris and London, Berlin, 
Moscow and Vienna should rule the nations 
they represent as our cities never can control 



42 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OR, 

tlie destinies of America ; and tliat they sliould 
exist in all their essential attribntes, while dynas- 
ties, peoples, civilizations change ; the gigantic 
monnments of the past, that no deluge of modern 
improvement can move from their fonndations. 
But an American city is only a convenient hotel, 
where a free conntry people come np to tarry and 
do business, with old recollections of nature haunt- 
ing them amid its toil and confusion ; where the 
foreigner halts at his landing, and, if able and en- 
terprising, pushes on to the " Far West ;" where the 
representative men of various kinds congregate 
during the few years of their culminating power to 
organize institutions and policies that represent the 
property and ideas of the millions that people the 
fields and villages without. Thus the American 
municipality can never have more than a represen- 
tative character. Its money is the accumulation 
of the country's industry ; its commerce is the ex- 
change of the products of the prairie, j^lantation, 
lakes and rivers, and thousands of factory villages 
clustering about innumerable waterfalls among the 
hills ; its scholarship is the growth of far away col- 
leges ; its literature culminates in the daily jour- 
nals ; its intelligence is rivalled by country towns ; 
its society does not give the tone to, but is the 
growth of, the civilization of tlie district it repre- 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 43 

Bents ; its politics finally yield to an outside pres- 
sure, and its institutions of philanthropy and reli- 
gion are supported by contributions of men and 
means from the sects that spread over entire 
States. It is not the deep, firm root out of whicli 
rises the trunk and foliage of a great nationality ; 
rather a boat tossed on the billows of American 
enterprise and emigration. 

Let us rejoice that American cities must be re- 
presentative, and cannot become our masters until 
the republic loses all but its name. Thank Hea- 
ven, liberty in j^ew York is not compelled to bur- 
row in forts and throw barricades across metro- 
politan streets, but ranges over her mountain tops, 
and along her plains, by the shores of her lakes, and 
down the valleys of her rivers. The open country 
is our fortress of freedom, and if the people know 
the worth of this precious boon, they will never per- 
mit the temporary classes of their cities to sacrifice 
it on the altar of municipal ambition. The cities 
of our State, even our proud " Metropolis," are but 
houses of industry, entertainment and public uti- 
lity, built by our people ; and while no individual 
right of the citizen is invaded, let them be so identi- 
fied in the general body politic, that they cannot 
be seized by demagogues who would turn them 
into barbaric castles, fortified by ignorance and 



4ri THE CAPITAL CITY ; OK, 

vice against the fresli and inspiring growtli of new 
world civilization. The sophistrj of " municipal 
independence " with which our people are so often 
befogged, is quite out of place to-day in the United 
States. It meant something in the middle ages, 
when a ferocious nobility occupied the country, 
and held the farmer as a serf, and the gates of 
the town were the only defence for the merchant 
and the artisan ; but in a State where the land is 
owned by the people, and an intelligent, virtuous, 
and prosperous country population build villages 
and cities for their commerce and conveni- 
ence, the man who demands that these towns 
shall cut the vital cord that binds them to 
their creative and sustaining power, is advocating 
the cause of the Despotism that is passing away 
and not the welfare of the Humanity that is to 
come. Let the free winds of the country blow 
through every lane and whistle round every cor- 
ner ; let the people of 'New York always keep 
their towns in their own hands ; then will the city 
in our republican life be what the garden is to the 
farm ; the inclosure to which every forest and 
hill, and swamp, and brook and cultivated field 
has sent its tribute : that amid its bewilderino; 
walks and shaded arbors may be seen a represent- 
ative from every nook and corner of the broad 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 45 

domain, controlled by the genius of a free society 
and a Cliristian State. 

In view of these facts, the rage of the people of 
New York for city life is an evil that may well 
arrest the attention of the patriot and Christian. 
The Empire State contains 46,000 sqnare miles of 
territory, of which only half, 13,000,000 acres, is 
cultivated at all, while 13,000,000 acres of 
imoccupied land, and untold mineral wealth invite 
to a century of industrial enterprise. Yet full 
one-third of our entire population of three and a 
half millions, is huddled into towns and exposed to 
the influences of American city life. Our young 
countrymen are born with a fever in their blood 
which drives them from the farm, or the factory, 
or the mine, where actual production is the result 
of their efforts, and economy of health, property, 
and soul is promoted, to the town where ninety 
per cent, of the merchants fail, and the mechanic 
toils with a pit of starvation ever yawning beneath 
his feet, and an ever increasing series of middle 
men enhances the cost of living, and pitiless com- 
petition of labor and perpetual temptation imperil 
integrity of mind and purity of life. Our country 
girls push for the city as by a natural instinct, seem- 
ing to relish better the intoxicating charm of being 
one colored wave of the torrent that rolls along a 



46 



THE CAPITAL CITY ; OK, 



Broadway than tlie centre of a neifi-hborliood amons: 
the fields. We have the right to ask these heedless 
throngs what purpose drives them to the city ; and 
compel them to contemplate its nicely balanced 
advantages and disadvantages before they step 
over the threshold of nalr.r.'j and adventnre in the 
labyrinth of artificial life. 

Doubtless, a city is a large labor-saving machine, 
where the greatest amount of spiritual energy can 
be directed to a given point with the least waste 
of material resources. It is an undeniable advan- 
tage to an able man to occupy such a tower of 
observation, whence the forces of civilization can 
be seen in their accumulated vigor and mutual 
relation. Knowing what is the capacity of society 
in each department, and how much energy is 
enlisted for the development of each, he can adjust 
his own eft'orts, save himself useless expenditure of 
his powers, and direct his genius to the exact point 
of demand. Tlien it is a privilege to a strong man 
to enjoy companionship of his equals, to learn to 
make a straight path through the tangled feet of 
others as indefatigable as himself; to be drilled 
and criticised, and finally educated by his ]3eers. 
Tliis is the great charm of the city to the leaders 
of every realm of life. Here, too, the tendencies 
of classes, tlie need of crowds, and tlie secrets of 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 47 

public and wide-reacliing influence over men, are 
best to be learned. And the town is a great work- 
shop filled with the best tools in the shape of 
organized forces and institutions. Labor and busi- 
ness are svsteiiiatized, society can be taken by the 
handle, literature is classified, and education and 
art in every branch assigned to its peculiar depart- 
ment. The caucus, the convention, the city 
church, the philanthropic institution, are the finest 
implements to do the kinds of work they represent. 
Doubtless, these are formidable tools for weak men 
to himdle ; and the incompetent man or woman 
who aspires to their use is like a child in an armory, 
reaching on tip-toe to lift the sword and bayonet 
from their rack above its imperilled head ; but 
when a strong man of war appears, he can arm in 
the least time, wdth the best weapons. If one is 
lip to the work, and can keej) wide-awake without 
destruction to body and mind, there is a great op- 
portunity in sitting at the end of the wire when the 
earliest message comes ; in catching the last news 
of fluctuation in trade or society, before it falls 
into the hands of the reporters ; in discerning the 
premonitory symptoms of all changes that modify 
the activity of man. The enterprising citizen thus 
always knows a little ahead of his rural brother, 
and so has a foot in advance in the race for success. 



48 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OE, 

Able men will, tlierefore, always face towards 
the great centres of Imman activity, and since few 
young people count themselves fools, the American 
cities will be the battle-ground of annihilating 
competition in every department of republican 
society. From the newsboy whose voice best 
threads the labyrinth of street noises, to the 
preacher who knows the magic word that, spoken in 
the darkest chapel, will fill the street with a crowd 
of the best mind and heart of the town, every post 
of profit and infiuence will be contested inch by 
inch, and the victor stand at last surrounded by a 
score of fallen adventurers. The young who rush 
to the city thinking its brilliant positions are easily 
secured, do not understand that no man succeeds 
there otherwise than as a representative of a class ; 
that every citizen who permanently occupies an 
important position, holds it by virtue of some pecu- 
liar power in a certain direction persistently exer- 
cised. Many bad people rule in town, but no fool, 
no mediocre person long occupies a desirable emi- 
nence (unless in certain instances where the fools 
and platitudes need a representative, and choose 
the genius in stupidity to be their king or queen). 
That the vast majority of adventurers on the pave- 
ment do not succeed ; that they work harder, live 
closer, sufter tenfold the frets and sorrows of life, 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 49 

and peril the best prospects of character beyond 
comparison with the risks of a country career, is 
open to every one who will see ; and only an 
insane man will assert that a majority of the one 
million two hundred thousand people who are 
waging this pitiless war of competition on the 
pavements of the Empire State, would not be 
vastly more useful to themselves and to society, if 
employed in developing the teeming resources of 
physical and spiritual wealth that prophecy the 
future of our noble State. 

For out of this very representative character of 
citizen society spring the formidable disadvantages 
that to the mass of men quite overbalance the 
opportunities of the town. The quiet, affectionate 
youth comes from the genial atmosphere of the 
rural neighborhood, and finds himself struggling in 
a rushing crowd of adventurers, each bent on 
success. For here success is the only alternative 
of ruin. There is no long suffering, pitiful com- 
munity behind the combatant to receive him, 
wounded and weary in defeat ; he must leave the 
pavement for the country if he fails, and too often 
there is no home among the fields ; and the deep 
vault of sin and sorrow which runs under every 
drawing-room and counting-room, claims him at 
the end. But even if this fate is escaped, through 



50 THE CAPITAL CITY; OK, 

what prolonged and withering toils, amid what 
dangers of health and life, and sanity of soul, does 
the prosperous citizen approach his reward. The 
majority of successful dwellers in town are scarred 
in body and twisted in mind by their prolonged 
stimulation of all the powers of life, and in grasp- 
ing the prize of ambition have lost their own 
best resources of enjoyment. Hapjnness does not 
dejpend so miiicli on v:hat we have as on a certain 
freshness of nature that illuminates every corner 
of our life with a light from within j and how 
few preserve that freshness amid the monotonous 
toils and discouraging collisions of the city. 

But the greatest peril besets the soul. lie who 
has impaired his reverence for man, duty, God, 
and the high religious self-respect which scorns any 
stooping to success, has made a failure of existence. 
And it is not easy to elbow the way through 
crowds of unknown faces — to lose almost the recog- 
nition of individual character in the contact with 
masses — to be forced to treat our best friends as 
rivals, and the multitude as instruments, without 
a disastrous decline in that love to man from which 
grows the reverence for duty and the supreme love 
of God. It is harder yet to own one's-self in a field 
where society in every direction claims you as one 
spoke in the wheel of some powerful organization, 



SOOIETY IX TOWN. 51 

and to be " left out " is to live iu a solitude more 
fearful than the primitive woods. When the out- 
side of life is so large a point of immediate success, 
what a temptation to a soul-destroying career of 
fashion and luxury ! and those who know best the 
seductions of sensuality that lurk beneath the gild- 
ing and propriety of the city, most distrust their 
own power of resistance. 

All dangers of the town may be summed up in 
this : that here, withdrawn from the blessed influ- 
ences of JSTature, and set face to face against 
humanity, man loses his own nature and becomes 
a new and artificial creature — an unhuman cog: 
in a social machinery that works like a fate, and 
cheats him of his true culture as a soul. The most 
unnatural fashions and habits, the strangest eccen- 
tricities of intellect, the wildest and most per- 
nicious theories in social morals, and the most 
appalling and incurable barbarism, are the legiti- 
mate growth of city life. If one has strength of 
constitution, physical, mental and moral, to push 
through all these hinderances, and stand upon the 
summit of the town, doubtless his exj^erience of 
man is more profound and curious, and his power 
to dexterously administer affairs greater than in a 
more secluded position; but who will risk the 



52 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OE, 

chances of a strife, where the mass are beaten 
and the one who outlives his companions suc- 
ceeds, without deep reflection and for unanswer- 
able reasons? "Who but a lunatic will rush into 
this melee^ trusting to luck, where luck is always 
on the side of the wise and strong? 

Therefore, let our young people in the country 
take much counsel and be very well assured in 
their own sober judgment, before they cast their 
lot in the city. Remember that any point of I^ew 
York is now in vital communication with the 
centres of civilization, and that every year is bring- 
ing all men nearer together. All the essential 
advantages of our republican life can be secured, 
by proper effort, in every village and cluster of 
farms in the Empire State ; and the extraordinary 
successes of towns are but for the few. Let not 
these few be too eager to vault to their post of 
ultimate power ; if the magnet is in them, the 
filings will concentrate anywhere; and only by 
long and patient experiment can any genuine man 
gain the magic platform whence electric wires 
course all over the land, and cause a thousand 
bosoms to thrill at every throb of his heart. For 
those adventurers who have concluded to sacrifice 
their manhood to a paltry success, we have nothing 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 53 

to advise ; " where the carcass is, there will the 
eagles be gathered together." But we implore 
every honest youth in our land to ask this question 
of his innermost soul : " Am I sure I shall gain 
enough in happiness, worthy prosperity and manli- 
ness, to risk the j)erils and disadvantages of the 
town ?" For this is the only test, a gain of man- 
hood and womanhood. Oh, how far beneath any 
noble soul should be the weak hankering for such 
a success as comes to thousands of families in the 
city ; a gain in money ]3nrchased by the sacrifice 
of honesty and reverence for man, a gain in com- 
forts and luxuries which are a slow poison in the 
blood ; of social position, which changes a sincere 
wife to a managing mother and a pure child to 
a reckless young man or a bedizened victim of 
female vanity ; a success that is a dismal failure in 
all that is fit to be acquired. Better the most 
obscure lot in the bleakest northern wilderness 
with virtue, than a palace in town with such a 
wreck of souls within. Better far the opportunities 
and joys of our favored country life, for thousands 
who only leave it to tempt a certain damage to the 
highest interests of the individual and the demorali- 
zation of the republic. 

It would be a great triumph of philanthropy if 
the large class of the poor could be removed from 



54 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OE, 

the cities of Ils'ew York and planted all over her 
wide territory ; and one dollar given to help a pan- 
per family ont of town is better charity than a 
year's support in the garret where they now fight 
with starvation. And with them should go thou- 
sands who are just living above the precipice of 
hopeless poverty, whom a few months' suspension 
of labor will hurl into the abyss of want and crime. 
And still more imperatively does public economy 
demand the exit of other thousands of middlemen, 
who are too able and respectable to fulfill their 
destiny by gaining a living from the mere handling 
the necessaries of existence, when they might be 
producing much that is useful elsewhere. Were 
our cities swept clean of these classes, there would 
be still enough to fulfill all the uses of the town ; 
merchants whose talents and character are adequate 
to manage the machinery and resist the seductions 
of commerce ; workmen of various kinds, whose 
superior skill and confirmed habits make them at 
home amid the intricacies of metropolitan industry; 
professional men, whose laudable ambition, forti- 
fied by ample experience, leads them to a munici- 
pal platform as their best position ; and enough of 
the rich and cultivated in manners to reform the 
vices of social life and organize amusements on a 
generous and Cliristian scale. But we cannot build 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 55 

cities " to order ;" they are and will be the huge 
receptacles for all varieties of humanity, and repre- 
sent the worst as snrelj as the best in our Ameri- 
can character. All the teacher of Christianity can 
do is to take men and women in towns as he finds 
them, and, spite of disheartening infitiences, keep 
on forever warning, instructing and inspiring to 
virtue. 

One good man teaches better than all the ser-* 
mons of the most eloquent doctors ; let me there- 
fore droj) my vocation and introduce a worthy 
family, which will speak for itself on the interesting 
theme of city life. Coming down the steps of the 
capitol yesterday, whom should I meet but my old 
friend Mr. John Manhattan^ who had stopped over 
Sunday in Albany, on a trip from E'ew York to 
one of our pleasant western cities. He may even 
be reading these words ; if so, I trust he will par- 
don my use of his example w^here my preaching 
would fail. 

Mr. John Manhattan lived on his father's farm 
in a little town on the Hudson, where he saw light 
some fifty years ago, till he was eighteen years of 
age, when he took a turn of several years in the 
village " variety store ;" and thence by a natural 
gravitation of his excellent business talents, v\'as 
landed in Albany at. twenty-five. It was not 



56 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OR, 

easy in any city twenty-five years ago for a rising 
young man to preserve his reputation and keep sliy 
of tlie roistering habits, which were called " high 
life," by a large class of rich men's sons ; and we 
have heard that Mr. Manhattan was at first snub- 
bed by a good many young gentlemen who were 
afterwards very glad to intercede for his influence 
and cash to relieve them from the unpleasant con- 
sequences of their gentility. Friend John, after a 
few years' experience, came to the deliberate con- 
clusion that nothing would be so good a protection 
against the attractions of his gay acquaintances as 
a good wife, and he reasonably concluded that a 
fashionable young lady who could not keep her 
brother from making a fool of himself at every 
party of the season, w^ould not aid him in living a 
sober life. This idea was confirmed on a visit to a 
charming village in western ISTew York (that trea- 
sury of sensible women), by the acquaintance of 
Miss Molly Mayflower, a young lady of Connecti- 
cut parentage, then keeping school in her native 
town. In due time (how it is unnecessary to ex- 
plain), the schoolmistress became the wife of our 
friend, and, as Mrs. Molly Mayflower Manhattan, 
has demonstrated the best way of reconciling na- 
tional peculiarities by creating a household in 
which the solidity and sagacity of 'New I^ether- 



SOCIETY IN TOAVN. 57 

lands and tlie enterprise and moral relinement of 
'New England have combined to enrich the civiliza- 
tion of New York by a model home. 

There was no danger of John falling asleep 
with a western schoolmistress of Yankee descent 
for a reminder ; indeed his old friends thought his 
business capacity decidedly increased by this 
addition of a silent partner. But they very early 
concluded that to kill themselves with work, in 
order to make a fortune, would be ridiculous ; so 
they pitched life on a moderate key — didn't try to 
sing in falsetto until they had mastered the lower 
regions of the scale. John buttoned up his coat 
after breakfast every morning and marched to his 
counting-room with the air of a man who knows 
just what he proposes to do, and intends to do it ; 
and when he walked home to spend the evening 
with his beloved wife, the work was generally 
done. He congratulated his " fast " friends on 
their speculations, was glad when Flash, Frisk, 
& Co., set up their carriage, and moved up town, 
but respectfully declined to indorse their notes for 
corner lots in the New Jerusalem Metropolitan 
Company. By close observation he acquired the 
science of business as distinguished from commer- 
cial quackery, and he is one of the ten young men, 
among the one hundred who began with him, that 

3* 



58 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OK, 

have never been obliged to investigate the pro- 
visions of tbe bankrupt law, and his house is now 
a solid concern and has not figured in Mr. Bowen's 
list during the last panic. 1 never saw him angry 
but once, when he kicked a 'New York broker 
down stairs for proposing a partnership in the stock 
operations of a coal mine which he knew lay 500 
feet under an inaccessible mountain ; but man}^ a 
sensible scheme for valuable public improvements 
has been the better for his advice or material aid. 
Mrs. Molly needed no new-fangled doctor to 
inform her that if she poisoned her family three 
times a day by a luxurious table, or simple dishes 
villainously cooked, they would not live out half 
their days ; it was always a pleasure to eat one of 
her dinners, for every course was seasoned with 
her common sense ; the children did not need to 
have the military called out to disperse their riot 
among the victuals ; but ate and drank and dressed 
as Mrs. Molly Mayflower Manhattan decided was 
best ; much to the disgust of Mrs. Aurelia Bom- 
bazine across the way, whose first fifteen years of 
married life were passed chasing the milliners and 
French cooks, and her remaining days in chasing 
the doctors and studying into new systems of 
medicine. "What rosy cheeks, what vigorous 
limbs, and straiocht backs these little Manhattans 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 59 

had ; somewliat furious and noisy, and occasionally 
riotous, from fullness of life and that portion 
of the " old Adam," that falls to the best of fami- 
lies ; but somehow they were managed, and I never 
heard in this house those peculiar domestic sounds 
which have greeted my ears when waiting in a 
fashionable parlor half an hour for the lady to 
array herself for a call of ten minutes, disciplining 
the nursery meanwhile. 

Mr. Manhattan lived in a medium house, fur- 
nished by his own and his wife's good taste, not by 
upsetting a cart of miscellaneous upholstery 
into his drawing-rooms. He knew what he 
spent, lived well enough, never gave or went to 
•^ wine suppers," spent his summers in a way that 
in twenty years has filled the souls of parents and 
children with long galleries of pictures drawn by 
God's finger from the glorious mountain tops and 
valleys and lakes of our wondrous State. They 
live now in ISTew York, very substantially and 
with that perfection of taste that everybody who 
enters their house seems to have found his own 
ideal of home. 

Yery early did John and Molly learn to keep 
out of the prison of an artificial fashionable caste. 
Instead of straining towards the West End, they 
put tliemselves on their human worth, andacce])ted 



60 THE CAPITAL CITY J OE, 

such friends as God sent ; and tliey jbave learned 
tliat "getting into society" is one of the chief 
American humbugs, that if you are t/rue^ good and 
heautiful in life's relations, Providence will send 
from every region of society those who are to l)e 
your chosen friends. Mr. Manhattan's house is 
the resort of the best society I ever knew ; that is, 
the best people in every rank and class seem to 
have been drawn, as by a magnet, to his modest 
parlors, and society has been to his family a wide, 
rich and varied school of human experience, 
rather than the stifled inclosure of any conceited 
set of "flrst people." It was always his theory 
that there are good people in every place and 
every region of humanity, and a true man can 
find them without any creeping or masquerading, 
or going down on his knees before a plate glass 
window or a livery ; and he has found his own 
and kept his manhood, and therewith he and his 
are content. 

I don't think any of the little folks of this 
family ever were miseducated at a boarding-school, 
or forced into a precocious possession of useless 
knowledge. Of " yellow novels," they know only 
the name ; and they have the shocking taste to 
prefer tlie sweet pages of Washington Irving to 
the rawhead-and-bloody-bones creations of Mr. 



SOCIETY IN TOWN. 61 

Sylvaniis Cobb, jr. But they know English, read 
good books, study hard, are very intelligent, and, 
best of all, know how to think. Their amuse- 
ments are so linked with duties and accomplish- 
ments that they seem to be the flower of all they 
do. Everything done indoors or out turns its 
sunny side ; home is a varied landscape of ever 
blooming joys; society is a pleasing recreation. 
They go together to an occasional lecture when 
they suppose the man has anything to say ; and 
once a month all hands are seen at the play, the 
concert, or some other place of entertainment; 
though the Rev. Dr. Doomsday one Sunday 
proved that the Devil is in all such carnal plea- 
sures, in a sermon of intense dramatic power, in 
which he was himself star actor, supernumeraries, 
and orchestra, the scene changed every five 
minutes, and the fifth act went out in a gigantic 
tableau of all creation going to universal crash, 
and which old Tom Parquette, who ought to know^, 
vowed was the best performance he had ever seen, 
on or off the boards. 

Mr. Manhattan was never known to be absent 
from the caucus or the polls, and has used all his 
influence to make every city where he has lived a 
better community. He does not vote for a policy 
because it will benefit his trade, or to feather the 



62 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OK, 

nest of some political friend ; but lie tries to find 
out tlie best man to serve in city affairs ; and in tlie 
politics of state and nation, lie stands on the old 
platform laid down eighteen hundred years ago : 
" Whatsoever you would that men shotilcl do to 
you, do ye even so to them^^ by which "glitter- 
ing generality " he tests all public men and mea- 
sures ; and though he does not expect to be presi- 
dent in 1860, he believes that the country will be 
agitated more and more, as by whirlwinds and 
earthquakes, until all the good men unite on this 
platform of adamant, first to vote down and then 
to regenerate the demagogues and their troop of 
servile and ignorant followers. He is considered 
" visionary" by most of the party leaders ; but any 
of them would give his ears to get his influence to 
back him at a contested election. He is a patriot 
Christian, and whether office goes or stays, he 
intends to stand by man who was made before 
governments and will outlast them all. 

What a deal of ecclesiastical diplomacy has been 
used to get Mr. Manhattan into all the churches ; 
meek suggestions of the value of his great influ- 
ence ; sad suggestions of heavy debts impending 
over the new church ; hints that a vacant ]3ew 
could be had next to Hon. So-and-so's seat ; mar- 
vellous interest in the children and relish of 



socip:ty in town. 63 

Mrs. Manliattan's teas by yarious worthy Doctors 
of Divinity. But for my life I don't know what 
church the good man attends ; he is so good a man, 
that theological dissensions always seemed an 
impertinence in his presence, and the most severe- 
faced bigot relents nnder the experience of an 
evening by his fireside. An atmosphere of tender 
piety hallows his habitation ; a full and silent tide 
of benevolence rolls from his doors, watering every 
interest of his brother man. The widow and 
orphan would bless him, but he is off, like a sun- 
beam, to escape their thanks, which fall on the 
hearts of Molly and the children like perpetual 
dew from summer skies. And though the Gospel 
trumpet is not blown before his steps in the street, 
a worldly j)olicy has only to show its head in his 
presence to shrink out of sight before his noble 
manhood, rooted in the everlasting laws of the 
Almighty. 

Such is my good old friend, and by such as he 
and his, will life in the American city become the 
fine and beautiful thing it may. Whoever can go 
and do likewise, let him seek the town, and there 
prove that after all it is not the sphere of action, 
but the soul that acts therein which ennobles our 
human existence. For a good soul is a breath 
of heaven among the fields and a sublimity among 



64 THE CAPITAL CITY. 

the hills ; an angelic presence on the streets and a 
sanctity that makes every home in town a church 
of the living Father. Oh! that midway of this 
wondrous valley, on the sides of these sloping hills, 
among the streets and lanes, and in the chambers 
of this ancient town, might be realized that life 
of Christian manliness and womanly love which 
will make us indeed the Capital City of a State 
whose God is the Lord. 



III. 

THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 

The traveller wlio approaclies our Capital City 
by any of its great routes of communication, is 
confronted by those Industrial Forces tliat repre- 
sent tlie Free Labor of tbe Empire State. "Ware- 
houses and piers, crowded with produce and miles 
of lumber, suggest a mighty expanse of fertile 
western fields and the vast northern wilderness. 
The river banks, vocal with the hum of machinery 
and illuminated at night with the glow of furnaces, 
proclaim that here the myriad arms of manufac- 
turing toil are moulding the crude elements of 
nature into forms of use and beauty. The flitting 
cloud of vessels and the stir of life along the docks 
declare the presence of a commerce whose roots 
touch the shores of far-oif nations, and which 
shoots a fruit-bearing branch into every street and 
lane of our venerable town. And if he looks 
beyond this area of activity, and studies the habits 

65 



66 THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 

and occupations of the 115,000 inliabitants who 
peo]3le this busy valley, lie will not be sm-prised at 
the wealth, comforts and refinement that have 
rewarded the toil of the past two centuries ; and he 
will surely not count that experiment of Free 
Labor a failure, which has already made an accu- 
mulation of property equal to $500, for every man, 
woman and child within the range of the strongest 
eye looking from the dome of the capitol, and 
reckons this gain of money the least of its many 
achievements in behalf of a true civilization. 

Concentrated within this lovely valley are the 
six great agencies of our system of Free Industry. 
In the spring of the year 1807, the first of these 
wonder-working forces might be seen in the shape 
of a strange craft, 100 feet by 12, drawing seven 
feet of water, creeping up the river at the rate of 
five miles an hour, trailing a dense cloud of smoke 
and sparks, bearing twelve passengers, who for the 
sum of $7 apiece bought the renown of sailing from 
E"ew York on the first steamboat. The Clermont, 
under the pilotage of Kobert Fulton. A strange 
expedition was that accounted by the good people 
of the metropolis, not thirty of whom believed the 
vessel would move a mile from the wharf: one 
venerable man saying to Judge Wilson as he 
embarked, " Jolin, will thee rhlc thy life hi such a 



THE FORCES OF FEEE LABOE. 67 

concern f I tell tliee^ she is the most fearful ivild 
fowl living^ and thy father ought to restrain 
theeP^ Could her heroic commander, as he stood 
silent on deck as this craft <^^VZ raove^ amid the 
cheers of thousands of astonished spectators, have 
been told that his little steamship was to inaugu- 
rate the first of the gigantic forces of our new 
American Industry, what a reward for long yeai-s 
of neglect and unrequited toil. 

In the same year, 1803, that Fulton and Living- 
ston obtained the exclusive right of navigating the 
waters of IST. Y. with their new steamboat, Gover- 
neur Morris stirred up an active engineer to the 
gigantic idea of connecting the Hudson and the 
lakes by a great canal. Very slowly this second 
agency of our national civilization loitered towards 
its realization. Thirteen years passed before the 
final mandate went forth, in 1816, from yonder 
capitol, that the Hudson should be married to 
Lake Champlain and Lake Erie ; and eight years 
Avere necessary to complete these magnificent 
works (in 1825), concerning which the wildest 
rhapsodies of Geddes, and Morris, and Clinton, 
now read like the most prosaic commonplace. 

The year (1826) following the completion of the 
canals, was signalized by the passage of the first 
railroad charter in the Legislature of xTew York, 



bo THE FORCES OF FBEE LABOR. 

and four years later (1830), the first train of cars 
rolling from the Mohawk to the Hudson, signalized 
the birth of the third of these servants of the 
Republic. And what a mighty power has that 
become. The Empire State is now veined by two 
thousand seven hundred and forty-nine miles of 
railroads, which furnish one-tenth of all our assessed 
valuation of real and personal estate, whose em- 
ployees number one-fourteenth of our entire popu- 
lation and one-thirty-sixth of our voters ; over 
which seven hundred and fifty thousand tons bur- 
den roll yearly, and forty thousand people ride 
every day. To each inhabitant of the State is due 
one hundred and thirty-five miles of travel a year, 
with only the remote risk of death to one passen- 
ger in one million two hundred and sixty-two 
thousand one hundred and sixty-five, or one for 
every forty-seven millions one hundred and sixty- 
four thousand four hundred and twenty-six miles of 
travel. 

Contemporaneously with these has risen into 
power the wondrous energy of agricultural and 
manufacturing machinery, w^hereby the productive 
power of the Eepublic is enlarged tenfold, and one 
man, marshalling an army of wheels, and knives 
and spindles, can cut his way through nature's 
most obstinate defences, and staud victorious in 



THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 69 

wealth and power to reacli the largest manhood of 
the age. 

Crossing our streets and clustering under one 
watchful eye in an office on Broadway, we behold 
the fifth of these agencies in the Telegraph, that 
magic cord which weaves the people of a State 
into one family, and ere long will tie the family in 
'New York to all the neighborhoods of the round 
globe, that Christ may come and make all one by 
the higher unity of Love. 

And finally, the child of all these mighty forces, 
and the most spiritual agency of Free Labor, is the 
Press — crowded with the daily and weekly results 
of our toil, reaching forth with such hands as the 
steamship, canal, railroad, machinery and tele- 
graph, and levying tribute over the whole world ; 
scattering 3,334,940 copies of its various issues per- 
petually over the State ; now a reflection of what 
is best and worst in our popular life, but destined 
hereafter to rise into the nobler form of an omni- 
present leader and propagandist of the Eepublic 
that is to be. 

These representative results and forces that 
cluster in the valley of the Capital City, are faint 
symbols of the mighty power of Labor that in 238 
years has changed 46,000 square miles of wilder- 
ness into the world's chief Eepublican State. Of 



70 THE FORCES OF FKEE LABOR. 

her 26,000,000 acres, 13,000,000 already have 
yielded to cultivation, and sustain a population of 
3,470,059, divided into 663,124 families, who in all 
the elements of a Christian civilization, doubtless 
excel any equal number of people concentrated 
under one government. T/e have all read of the 
gigantic armies led forth by great commanders in 
ancient and modern times for the subjugation of 
empires. But could the army of Free Laborers in 
this Hepublic, through some long, bright day of 
our northern summer, on one of our broad vrestern 
plains, defile in gigantic review before our eyes, 
how poor would seem the pomp and pageantry of 
destructive war. 

Let us figure to ourselves this review of our 
Lidustrial host. First would appear a triumphal 
car, emblazoned with the records of the men and 
deeds, that make our history of 238 years, floated 
over by a banner inscribed with the ]3roud device 
of our commonwealth — the risins^ sun and the 
inspiring " Excelsior." 

Now appears the foremost rank of tillers of the 
earth — a host of 253,292 strong men, with their 
wives and children, bearing their implements of 
conquest, followed by a cloud of 7,000,000 domes- 
tic animals and innumerable flying fowl ; trailing 
in great wa2;ons, the varied productions of the 



THE FORCES OF FREE LABOK. 71 

land. Upon their standards would be read no 
chronicles of bloody fight, but such victories as 
these : Yalue of N'ew York lands, $1,107,272,715 ; 
3,256,948 tons of hay ; 62,449,093 bnshels of grain; 
17,127,338 bnshels esculent roots; 4,907,556 lbs. 
flax ; 7,192,254 lbs. hops ; 13,668,830 bnshels 
apples ; 9,231,959 lbs. wool ; $2,400,000, value of 
poultry ; $1,421,750 miscellaneous roots and fruits; 
20,965,861 gallons milk; 90,293,077 lbs. butter; 
38,944,249 lbs. cheese ; 4,935,815 lbs. sugar ; 
2,557,876 lbs. honey ; $1,138,082, value of gar- 
dens ; — glorious, beneficent conquest of nature for 
the sustenance of man. 

Xow comes the second army of 214,899 free 
laborers in manufactures, not clad in ignorance and 
rags, but bearing the comforts of home, and tread- 
ing the earth with the bold step of men who know 
their position and rights in the State. To what 
grander music could this host keep step than the 
iron harmonies of machinery that night and day, 
from the Ocean to Xiagara, sing the song of man's 
coming deliverance from slavery and want, and 
subjection to material things. Look at their ban- 
ners flashing in the sun, inscribed with their 
record : $106,349,977, capital of mechanical 
indnstry in New York; raw material employed, 
$178,394,329; manufactured articles, $317,686,685; 



72 THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 

24,833 manufactories — or adorned with pictured 
representations of tlie myriad forms of grace, com- 
fort and loveliness that issue from the workman's 
busy hand. 

'Next we behold the concentrated column of 
20,Y58 merchants, who are the agents of the pre- 
ceding host in transmitting the fruits of their labors 
to the ends of the earth. Here are the humble 
traders of the half-peopled wilderness, side by side 
with the merchant princes of the city, all bound 
into a brotherhood of interest, and flanked by the 
professions that depend upon their aid. "What a 
gorgeous spectacle is this ! Wares and merchan- 
dise, the products of all climes — the beauty, and 
manners, and civilization of every people — fleets 
of ships sailing and steaming on their ensigns — ■ 
tiie long line of the freight car — the slow procession 
of boats moving through green fields — cities 
^^pringing from the earth as by the summons of 
the enchanter, emblems of law, science, charity, 
7-cligion, endowed and fostered by an all-embracing 
Commerce. 

And not far ofl", coming nearer as the years roll 
on, would cluster the army of laborers on the high- 
est soil of New York, the souls of her people. The 
teacher, who receives the child from its mother; 
the lawyer and legislator, who embalm the peo- 



THE FOECES OF FREE LABOR. 73 

pie's idea of justice in a statute ; the editor, the 
lecturer and public speaker, who stand at the ear 
of the masses; the author and the scholar, who 
appeal from their ohscuritj of to-day to the future 
meed of fame ; the artist, charming the crowd by 
the vision of beauty ; the preacher, prophesying of 
righteousness and love eternal ; — all these, now too 
often accounted the idlers in the field, shall one 
day be known as brother laborers, toiling on the 
summits of the Spiritual life, towards which the 
slopes of this material success ascend. 

What a review were this — the most powerful 
Eepublic marshalling her armies of Industry — 
and bless God ! all Free Men. J^J'owhere upon her 
broad and fair expanse does man toil in servitude 
to his brother man ; and, so help us, the Father of 
all, while the Ocean washes the wharves of l^ew 
York, and the Hudson flows to the sea, and the 
storms sing their anthems uj) in the Adirondack, 
and the sun sets, a golden glory beyond our western 
lakes — let no slave pollute our soil ! And the day 
whose dawn shall behold this glorious army, as 
one soul, lifting up its voice before heaven, and 
registering an oath on high in behalf of man, shall 
not decline to its evening shades until it hears, 
borne on the south wind, the sigh of our Nation's 
barbarism, proclaiming that its sentence of death 

4 



74 THE FOECES OF FEEE LAEOE. 

has been uttered, and its hour of abdication draws 
nigh. 

Such is the spectacle presented by the Free 
Labor of New York in its material aggregates and 
secondary forces. ' But these lead us back to man, 
and while another class of teachers can best 
instruct the people on the details of political 
economy and the arts of industrial success, the 
most profound questions to the Christian philoso- 
pher \\ill be : To what sjpiritual end is all this f 
in what relation does a Free Industry stand to 
man's highest good f and are we now on the wag 
to the style of Labor ^ ^ohich is the fit exj^ression 
of that hest Civilization founded on the everlasting 
law of Love f 

Labor is the point where the soul of man touches 
the ^^hysical world; and the quality of work is 
the test of man's superiority over nature and alti- 
tude in the spiritual existence. Free Labor, in its 
largest sense, is the gauge of ITational Advance- 
ment. Every nation, in ancient or modern times, 
has been truly great in projDortion to the emanci- 
pation of its workers. The historian, JSTiebuhr, 
dates the real decline of Rome from the period 
when work ceased to be honorable, and the land 
once tilled in small farms by her statesmen and 
generals, w^as monopolized by rich men, and culti- 



THE FORCES OF FREE LABOE. 75 

vated by hordes of slaves. Who cannot read the 
whole degeneracy of Spain in the proud laziness of 
her population, or the real grandeur of England in 
the variety and growing freedom of her mighty 
industry? Indeed, the best state must be that 
which offers the broadest field for the development 
of the active energies of its citizens ; which is dis- 
tinguished for the variety and vigor of its industrial 
professions ; and where it is easiest for every man 
to obtain the post in which his peculiar genius may 
find scope in creative toil. 

Free labor is the test of national superiority — 
not so much on account of what it produces, as for 
its results on the citizen. For only in such a con- 
dition of affairs can man receive the true education 
of all his powers, and use his circumstances for the 
building up of his manhood. Hence although the 
quantity and quality of production is one evidence 
of a prosperous people, yet a more striking proof 
is the effect of this work on the population itself. 
Are the men and women of a state ennobled hy their 
occupation^ and is their daily business a school of 
Christian citizenship f is the first question in this 
investigation. For the most astonishing works 
may doubtless be produced by the sacrifice of 
man ; and such labor is only Satanic. 

Compare the a:igantic monuments of Eastern des- 



Y6 THE FORCES OF FKEE LAEOE. 

potism witli the acliievement of our JSTew York 
industry! "We can sIioay no pyramids, no laby- 
rinths, no massive cities, tombs and temples, which 
will challenge the assaults of time. Bless God, we 
cannot j)oint to mighty j)iles of stone and sculpture 
slowly raised by the hands of bondmen, cemented 
by the blood and tears of oppression ; huge grave- 
stones, marking the spot where the noblest aspira- 
tions of humanity were buried, and generations fell 
and wasted to please a despot's whim. But look 
at our monuments ; an Erie Canal, whose project- 
ing, construction and use, has been the primary 
school of the free industry of our State ; a system of 
railroads, extemporized by the spontaneous enter- 
prise of a whole people, groaning beneath the 
weight of free products or the armies of emigrants 
fleeing from oppression and poverty to comfort and 
liberty ; cities not built for a century's endurance, 
but such as a new State, using every vital energy 
to the utmost, can throw together to shelter the 
families and transact the business of a Bepublican 
community. 

So is the glory of our free ISTorthern industry not 
found in its great material results of agriculture, 
manufactures, commerce ; for doubtless our work 
is often crude, and partakes of the rawness of a 
continent coming out of the woods ; but in what 



THE rOECES OF FREE LABOR. 77 

man has learned iincl become in producing it all, 
and tlie new powers and opportunities for the best 
society he is daily acquiring in this magnificent 
school. And the chief superiority of our system of 
labor over that of other lands and other districts of 
our own continent is, that through it we are com- 
ing to that point where all industrial operations 
shall play into the hands of that highest form of 
work, the development of the best men. 

So the question of Free Labor is not to be argued 
so much from its economical results, though here 
the argument is triumphant, as from its spiritual 
aspects. Every true son of Adam will maintain 
that the happiest word that ever greeted his ears 
was his command to leave an Eden of childish 
innocence for a wilderness of manly toil. Free 
Industry is for the elevation and education of the 
race. All human experience has demonstrated 
that the only way to greatness of any kind is the 
straight and narrow way of labor. And when 
man toils, in the exercise of his great attribute of 
freedom, he is in the way to gain his chief distinc- 
tion. Creation is the grandest attribute of man — 
the point in which he approaches nearest his 
Maker. To create new combinations from the 
material universe ; by the discipline of free industry 
to discover the creative laws of Omnipotence, and 



Y8 THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 

by obedience to tliem to express bis best concep- 
tions of existence ; to impress bimself on the wbole 
eartb, and even fill tbe invisible elements witb tbe 
finer energy of bis victorious mind ; especially to 
create in tbe realm of spirit ; moulding bnman 
nature into bigber forms of* individual and social 
life, and by a far-reacbing insigbt, peopling tbe 
realms of imagination witb new and glorious 
beings, wbicb bear tbe seal of reality and become 
tbe ideals of tbe generations ; tbis is God-like ; and 
only tbrougb Free Labor can man approacb tbis 
tbrone of bis power, and rise into tbe companion- 
sbip of tbe creative love of tbe Fatber of all. 

And berein is tbe overwbelming argument 
against tbe barbarous logic wbicb is now filling 
tbe press of balf our Union and tbe Legislative 
balls of tbe Kepublic witb tbe assertion tbat labor 
belongs to capital, and tbe slave industry of tbe 
past is a greater success tban tbe free labor of tbe 
present. !N"o doubt statistics are against tbis 
tbeory, but wben was a nation ever cipbered out 
of barbarism ? Let its advocates pile up tbeir bales 
of cotton, tbeir tons of sugar, tbeir rice and bemp 
and loatbsome tobacco, to tbe beavens, and exult- 
iugly cry : Tbis is ours ! But what has lecome of 
the Creative Power of Man meanwhile? Wbere 
is your growtli of tbat creative energy wbicb lifts a 



THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 79 

people ever higher in the scale of humanity? 
Where are the inventions, the labor-savin 2: ma- 
chinery, the advanced modes of labor, the improve- 
ment of lands ; all that bears witness to the growth 
of intelligence and power over nature % Yonr 
4,000,000 of laborers are a smaller creative force 
in the world's industry than many a ISTew England 
village. ]S"ot even able to use what the rest of the 
world has invented, they plod on, a great black 
mass of brutal toil, tagging behind the peasantry 
of Europe. "Where has fled the creative force of 
your nobler race? What element is the white 
laboring class in slave regions, in the inyentive 
power of the world? Insignificant beyond com- 
parison. While England has built up an empire 
from a group of islands smaller than your oldest 
State, you have no resource but the barbarian's 
method of making one region a desert and striking 
your tents and moving to another. And where is 
your creative power in the higher regions of art, 
literature, theology, philosophy, politics, charac- 
ter? Let the best civilization of the age judge 
between you and itself. And this you call suc- 
cess — to sacrifice the creative energy of fifteen 
great States ; to carry labor back to the age of the 
Pharaohs ; to make yourself a cipher in the forces 
of an intelligent and Christianized industry ; and 



80 THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOE. 

boast of tlie cotton and sugar and tobacco you have 
received in excbange. And this Free Society you 
call a failure, which is increasing faster in creative 
power, in every realm of life, than any previous 
community on earth! Could you cover a con- 
tinent with your products, and spin a shroud of 
your cotton w^ide enough to wrap humanity for her 
burial, one free man, educated in the school of a 
Christian industry, would be a sufficient jefutiition 
of your shallow philosophy. 

And the same logic will scatter to the winds the 
affectation of superiority, which in a free State like 
ours, plumes itself on the distinction of laziness, 
and thinks gentility only the prerogative of the 
drone. Could the young man that saunters the 
streets to forget the lagging hours, and the maiden 
that scorns the severe toil of body and mind, but 
know what they are doing and becoming thereby, 
they would awaken from their dream of folly. 
For, pray tell me, is not true gentility also true 
nobility of character ? Is there any genuine superi- 
ority other than spiritual power and worth ? and 
when you despise labor of the hands and mind, do 
you not renounce that chief glory of man, his 
creative Life ? If you make nothing in the realm 
of nature, or think nothing in the realm of ideas, 
or mould no character or shape no social result in 



THE FOIICES OF FEEE LABOE. 81 

tlie realm of Plumanity — wliat are you but an 
underling, a worthless pensioner on society, taking 
tlie back track towards brutality and impotence ? 
Is your laziness fraught with joys to compensate 
for the abdication of your throne of creative 
dominion ? ^re you satisfied to gravitate towards 
the irrational animals for the sake of their pleasant 
sensations and exem23tion from care ? Do you 
shrink from that trouble, toil and anxiety which 
are the inevitable accompaniments of all human 
achievements ? Learn that the utmost of these is 
only a penny toll paid at the gates which open 
into new regions of grandeur and loveliness ; and 
that he who really understands himself, quite for- 
gets these in the inspiration that burns higher, as 
he mounts the steep ways of Power. Aim to be 
the best, if you will, but show us your title in 
creative toil, superior to any other, before you 
expect of us a reception of your claim. 

Since Free Labor is valuable, chiefly for its 
spiritual results on man, it will only be found in its 
genuine form where man applies the highest facul- 
ties of his nature to the occupations of his every- 
day existence. "Where every citizen puts his whole 
soul into his work, and makes it the expression of 
his finest conception of manliness or womanhood ; 
where a people writes out its grandest idea of 

A* 



OZ THE FOKCKS OF FEES L.VEOR. 

trutli, and justice and grace in the colossal dialect 
of an intense and varied industry, then shall we 
know what Eree Labor can do. Thus we have 
only to look at the productions of any country to 
understand how far a liberal and elevated idea of 
work has advanced. A^nybody could read the 
whole philosophy of Chinese art and life out of 
the manufactures of China. In the evidences of 
minute and patient drudgery, the gawky forms 
and richness of material displayed in their manu- 
factures, we discover the mark of an unprogressive 
nation, v^here life is so cheap that a man's whole 
existence can easily be spared to the elaboration of 
one corner of a shawl, or the carving on the leg 
of a table, where with the richest material and the 
utmost patience to mould them, the same stereo- 
type figures and shapes proclaim that generation 
after generation is inclosed in a wall of self-conceit 
and slavish routine. Compare with this spectacle 
the industry of the British islands, and behold in 
its ever-expanding variety, its constant improve- 
ment in all the appliances of machinery, its grow- 
ing beauty, its thoroughness, the evidence that 
liere man is gradually approaching a true idea of 
the mission of toil. 

Tested by this rule, we shall find much to criti- 
cise in the industry of our State. We may suppose 



THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 83 

that Labor is free in our great commonwealth ; 
and so it is redeemed from the infamy of personal 
slavery ; but free from many hindrances to its 
highest development, it is not. We are yet in a 
transition state from the barbarism of servile labor 
to the Christian civilization of a truly enlightened 
and purified idea of work. Industry is yet embar- 
rassed by the obstinate tyranny of corporations ; 
by the tendency towards an aristocracy of wealth ; 
by the lingering sense of degradation that hangs 
about toil ; by the ignorance that oppresses so large 
a proportion of the toiling masses ; and, above all, 
by the dishonesty and unveracity that permeate 
our system of manufactures and trade. Our whole 
idea of life, as a people, is far below any worthy 
conception of human existence. We are, as a 
State, great in our worldliness ; pursuing material 
successes and temporary ambitions, to the woeful 
neglect of the higher achievements of life; more 
desirous of making splendid demonstrations in our 
own day, than of laying the deep foundations of an 
enduring Eepublic. This popular notion of life 
expresses itself in our Labor, which is enslaved in 
every way that a man or a State is enslaved by a 
narrow and sensual view of existence. 

But let not our neighbors in the servile States 
exult over our panics and dangerous classes in com- 



84 THE FOKCES OF FREE LABOE. 

mercial cities, and general sliort-comings ; great as 
our diflienlties are, tliey are snch as tliese regions 
are not yet capaJDle of feeling, nor will be for a 
century to come. Ours are the difficulties that en- 
noble a State by stimulating its best mind and 
heart into great effort, the struggles of millions of 
men, nominally free, to become spiritually emanci- 
pated; not the desperate, sullen heavings of a 
brutal race to rise to ownership of its own bodies 
and souls and the insolent and cruel effort of a 
superior caste to keep down this rising tide of 
human nature. Thus, while in half our country 
Free Labor can hardly be attained except by the 
very dissolution and reorganization of society, in 
ISTew York we need no anarchy, no overturn in 
social and political constitutions; but only a better 
understanding by our people of the dignity and 
relations of labor, and a persistent effort to elevate 
the men and women who compose our armies of 
industry. 

Tlie first grand want of our present system of 
labor is intelligence. Ignorance is slavery by the 
inevitable laws of God ; and whoever flatters igno- 
rance anywhere does it for the pur230ses of despot- 
ism. Our labor is not truly free in ~^ew York, 
because it is not sufficiently cultivated. While 
thousands of farmers are prevented by their want 



THE FOr.CES OF FKEE LABOR. 85 

of information and prejudice from adopting the 
m^Tiad improvements of modern scientific agricul- 
ture, and other thousands of our mechanics and 
operatives know just enough to be tied to one kind 
of secondary work all their lives, and our young 
men enter into mercantile life so ill prepared that 
seventy per cent, fail, how can there be anything 
but a practical enslavement of whole regions of 
society ? Men and women thus qualified are always 
at the mercy of the better instructed. Beyond a 
limited circle of plodding toil, they are lost, and 
must work as they are forced by the few clever 
people who organize the great machinery of labor 
and appoint them their place therein. They are 
exposed to distress in every great panic and are not 
able to avail themselves of times of prosperity. 

It is vain for such laboring classes to protest 
against the injustice they sufi'er. ISTobody disputes 
that they are practically shut up in a narrow place ; 
but how came they there ? Chiefly because they 
have preferred ignorance to intelligence. The 
State makes provision for the instruction of all, and 
the means of practical improvement are open to 
whomsoever desires them. But if two hundred 
thousand children are kept out of school by the 
wickedness of their parents, and other hundreds of 
thousands of young men and women prefer the 



86 THE FORCES OF FKEE LABOK. 

luxury of ignorance, tliej are welcome to it ; but 
they will learn that it is tlie most expensive luxury 
in which they can indulge. ISTo man or woman is 
too old to learn, no girl or boy is too young to be 
taught, that love for improvement which is the 
great emancipator of the laboring man. 

Especially let our youth of both sexes resolve to 
be generally cultivated, and whatever they under- 
take, learn to do in the best way. Tlie young 
laborer in the household, in the shop or on the land, 
who is informed concerning his profession as a 
science, knows its central principles, its capacities 
for improvement, all its labor-saving machinery 
and its relations to other professions, is clothed 
with a power that will always defend him against 
the. tyranny of his superior. Whoever resolves to 
have nothing to do v^ith sham worth, to put the 
best he knows into all he does, and to learn the 
best there is to be learned, will gravitate to 
a higher position as he advances in skill and 
fidelity. 

"What a garden would scientific farming make 
of western 'New York and the valley of the Hud- 
son ; what a hive of industry could swarm in our 
mining districts; what wealth of manufacturing 
industry would a higher intelligence and wise 
legislation develop along our river banks ; what a 



TPIE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 87 

diiferent thirig were our commerce guided by a 
body of cultivated men ; and what a new life would 
dawn in our homes if the art of housekeeping, the 
finest of all professions, were well known, and wo- 
man were thoroughly instructed in every avocation 
where she could maintain herself. Who can com- 
pute the additional comfort, wealth and opportu- 
nity for human advancement, such a reform would 
iiiauo-urate ? 

And even a greater want than intelligence is 
truth in our present system of labor. It is impos- 
sible that industry in E"ew York should be free 
until it is honest. Let any man study the diiferent 
phases that this untruth assumes in all regions of 
our work, and he will no longer wonder at our 
thousand embarrassments. No class of laborers 
is exempt from it. Tlie farmers are always too 
ready to slight their work, to cheat tlie land of 
its proper cultivation and defraud their crops 
and flocks and herds of their just attention, 
and therefore plunder society of what it has 
the right to expect from the soil ; to say nothing 
of their questionable ways of dealing in their 
products. The root of all other industrial dis- 
honesty is laid in the field, the pasture, the dairy 
and the kitchen. Thence the ill weed grows 
apace ; the manufacturer, thus skinned by the pro- 



88 THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOE. 

ducer, slights liis work, makes clothes and tools and 
shoes and fnrnitnre to " sell '' and not to nse. The 
mechanic who buys diluted milk, and half fatted 
beef and mutton, and j9.our that won't " rise," has his 
revenge by building a house that will tumble down 
over the heads of a second generation, by charging 
exorbitant prices for poor service, and making his 
word as cheap as his work. The merchant, assailed 
by dishonesty on every side, strikes out to defend 
himself, and broken banks and exploding firms and 
gambling speculations make panic inevitable. The 
great corporations contain the flower of this ini- 
quity, and a dozen respectable men as a " board of 
directors " will commit iniquities and 023pressions 
of which either would be ashamed in his private 
affairs. Thus the rich, knowing that they have 
been obliged to fight to gain their money, have so 
little sense of public obligation in its use, and 
classes are set against each other, each fully av/are 
of its own sins. 

Of course this dishonesty vitiates all other jjro- 
fessions ; and the sons and daughters of people that 
cheat in labor will give us a sham instruction in 
school, a corrupt legislation in the senate, a litera- 
ture that reads best while seen on the wall in pass- 
ing, and a Gospel according to the fashion in the 
church. Let not tlie farmer, the meclianic and 



THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOR. 89 

day-laborer accuse the men higlier np of tliis dis- 
lioiiesty ; tliej have created it by their own nnfaith- 
fnlness. If the primitive employments of life are 
honestly performed, those that grow out of them 
will be of like character. Thousands of the servant 
girls and day-workers who this winter will shiver 
and starve have done all they could to bring on 
this panic by unfaithful and dishonest labor, by 
extortion and extravagant expenditure in prosper- 
ous times. There is untruth enough in our JSTew 
York labor yet to produce a general financial explo- 
sion every quarter of a century. All professions 
are involved in it; and as a consequence Free 
Labor does not exist. 

In proportion as industry is untrue to the 
eternal laws of rectitude, does it descend to the en- 
slavement of the less clever by the more clever. 
When we can honor each other so much that we 
regard every attempt at sham or knavery as an 
unpardonable insult to human nature, we shall 
begin to realize that ''glorious liberty " which only 
rectitude confers. Any man, whether a swee^^er 
of streets or a president of a railroad ; any woman, 
whether a cook or an artist, who slights work or 
wrongs a customer in any way, is to that extent 
laboring to enslave the human race ; and vrhoever 
in the liumblest walk of industry is faitlifnl, is 



90 THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 

doing his utmost to emancipate society througli tlie 
whole world. 

A radical reform in such particulars could not 
fail to be accompanied with an advance in beauty. 
Our industry would take a more graceful shape ; 
our life of toil would be less angular, coarse and 
uncongenial, and an increased appreciation of ele- 
gance appropriate to every production would every 
where make itself known. And through the State 
a more cheerful atmosphere and unostentatious 
loveliness would mark the growth of that industrial 
freedom which puts oif at once the stolid, sullen 
gloom of the slave, and the gruff coarseness of the 
boor, and clothes itself in the natural and graceful 
deportment of the freeman. 

And this system of intelligent, honest, graceful 
Free Labor, would place our people on a higher 
spiritual plane of existence ; and it would then be un- 
derstood, that the end of man is not " bread alone," 
but manhood in its greatest sense. Then the folly 
that toil is degrading would be silenced by the 
comprehension of the true purpose of effort. It 
would be understood that the end of all professions 
is to acquire power and opportunity to cultivate 
the highest qualities of our nature ; that a day- 
laborer may obtain this privilege, and a legislator 
can do no more ; and tliat men are not to be 



THE FOECES OF FKEE LABOK. 91 

honored according to tlie work tliey do, bnt accord, 
ing to the use they make of the power which that 
work has obtained. All industry of hand or mind 
is mean if done only for itself, and hallowed by no 
aspiration for a loftier character ; all effort is noble 
which is linked with the best improvement of our 
nature, and bears the fruits of an enlarging life. 
Tlie labor of the Empire State will be truly free 
when its great powers and growing opportunities 
are used as persistently for the spiritual regenera- 
tion of man and the elevation of society, as they 
now are for private selfishness and public material- 
ism. And let no sensual economist or political 
partisan promise the people larger freedom at any 
cheaper rate than a thorough reform in intelligence, 
truth and beauty, and a consecration of their 
wealth and all its opportunities to the service of 
man. 

We shall, in the light of these principles, be at 
no loss to account for the great and deadly evils 
that still afflict our civilization. Does anybody 
wonder why New York, the most powerful Repub- 
lican State in the world, is still, tried by the 
standard of Christianity, a half barbarous common- 
wealth ; that her cities swarm with multitudes 
vibrating between beggary and crime ; that igno- 
rance still holds the balance of political power ; and 



92 THE FOKCES OF FEEE LABOR. 

superstition is so deep and dense over wliole dis- 
tricts of her dominion ; and sensuality and intem- 
perance eat out so much of her best vitality ; why, 
in the great contest between the freedom of the 
whole and the tyranny of the few, she hardly seems 
yet to have a stable mind, and holds her great 
name as the watchword, now of a spasmodic liberty 
and now of an insolent despotism ? The answer is 
too plain. She is not yet a free State because so 
much of the same dark blood runs through her own 
veins that clogs the heart of communities lower yet 
in the scale of civilization. She has yet too many 
proud, sensual, selfish men, who despise work, and 
would gladly lash a black or white slave to do their 
toil ; too many frivolous and idle women, who care 
not whose body is bent or whose soul is cramped 
if they can live in ease and comfort; too many 
laborers who secretly despise their profession and 
only work to gain the means of degrading them- 
selves by senseless material pleasures and low 
ambition ; too few who have the courage to com- 
pliment the masses by telling them they are not 
what the citizens of such a State should be ; that 
while they toil in their present spirit they must be 
content to see other States lead off in the sublime 
crusade for a freedom that here means Christian 
Democracy. 



THE FOKCES OF FEEE LABOK. \)6 

When the young men of New York resolve that 
they will regenerate indnstry from its present clogs 
of ignorance, untruth and vulgarity; when the 
young women of the Empire State decide to take 
the industrial field, and occupy and adorn every 
post of toil for which nature has given them the 
ability ; when we cease to boast so much of our 
great canals, and cities, and crops, and wealth, and 
concentrate our highest ambition on the quality of 
our humanity ; then may we hope to gain the re- 
nown of the freest • commonwealth. But let no 
delusion possess our souls that liberty is extem- 
porized in political campaigns, or will come any 
the sooner for our high-flown rhetorical adulation. 
Freedom comes only to a people that is resolved 
to work for it, protect it by all sacrifices, preserve 
it by individual consecration, and watch its ene- 
mies with an "eternal vigilance." So does our 
industry culminate in the sacred toil after that per- 
sonal freedom which, inspiring every soul with the 
liighest spiritual activity, shall mould a free com- 
monwealth great and glorious bevond the emiiires 
of the earth. 



lY. 

MAN 

AN^D HIS MODEEK INVENTI0:N'S. 

On a Lriglit October day I looked from tLc 
heights of Iloboken over the Metropolitan City of 
the United States. Beautiful was it outspread, 
clasped in azure arms to the beating bosom of its 
ample bay, its spires and masts bristling like the 
pinnacles of a fairy temple in the rosy distance. 
The ferry-boats shot in and out, like living crea- 
tures ; the Hudson steamer emerged from a golden 
vapor in the north, and every water craft was 
transformed by the magic atmosphere into a gilded 
barge navigating an enchanted sea. Viewed in 
the dreamy mood befitting the day, it was easy to 
transform the whole spectacle into a pictured 
symbol of the power of man. Out of a river, a bay 
and a savage island had this potent magician 
evoked the glorious creation, that hovered in this 
autumn haze. How easy to worship the Creator 

95 



96 MAiT AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 

of all this, did not the reflection interpose, that 
even he is bound by a lav7 that dates not from his 
own will, whose servant he is in his mightiest exer- 
cise of power. And then first dawned upon me the 
grand significance of these words, spoken in the 
old time, though fresher than the telegraphic dis- 
patch of to-day : " Seek ye first the Icingdom of God 
and his righteousness^ and all these things shall he 
added unto you.^"^ 

What a declaration is here of the relation of man 
to these modern inventions, which so often excite 
him to a deification of Immanity and a scorn- 
ful defiance of God's everlasting laws of the soul. 
Translated .into our form of thought, it means: 
Cultivate the highest style of manhood, and the 
forces of nature shall become your servants, and 
life shall be full of opportunities. The "king- 
dom of God " is not a place away ofi" in space, but 
is a state of character as possible to-day in ]^ew 
York as in any future world, at any point in eter- 
nity. Anywhere in this state, or that world to 
come, he who makes the acquisition of a religious 
character founded on love to God and humanity 
his supreme object, will be able to use the opj^or- 
tunities ofiered by the state of existence in which 
he abides. Standing thus at the hoad of creation, 
man shall become its real sovereiQ:n bv force of his 



MAN AND HIS MODEKN INVENTIONS. 97 

moral energy, and " all things " needful to his eter- 
nal growth " shall be added unto him." 

The peculiar state of American civilization to- 
day preaches a sermon from this text, which I shall 
only endeavor to report. Let me, with as little 
mixture of my own theories and fancies as may 
be, endeavor to interpret that civilization in its 
relations to man; show to what extent it is the 
creature of that spirit of invention which is the 
great obligation and privilege of our day; what 
we must be to live amid its opportunities with dig- 
nity and success ; and what retributions will over- 
whelm us unless we become great and good enough 
to control it. 

No man should understand the scope and signi- 
ficance of the modern spirit of invention so well as 
the citizen of our Republic, for no country is so 
much its creature. In the despotic governments 
of Europe we discover the awkward contrast be- 
tween institutions a thousand years old and inven- 
tions of to-day ; and the great effort of their ruling 
classes is to monopolize the use of these new agen- 
cies and thereby increase their own power ten fold. 
All the mechanics of the nineteenth century con- 
centrate in the army of Louis JSTapoleon. Russia 
is pushing the railroad and telegraph towards Asia 
to pour down her armed millions with greater dis- 



98 MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 

patch upon its enfeebled barbarism. The Prussian 
government has captured the common school, and 
made every teacher a policeman to aid in the 
manufacture of a Prussian citizen. Even in Eng- 
land the new powers of life are jealously retained 
by the few and only by faltering steps do the igno- 
rant masses come into their inheritance. But in 
the United States of America these wonderful 
agencies are the possession of the people. Every 
man and woman of the ruling race has the nominal 
right to use them, and only ignorance or indiifer- 
ence is shut out from their enjoyment. Who, then, 
should understand the relation of man to his 
modern invention if not the citizen of that country 
which is itself the most surprising invention of 
these latter days ? 

Do we, indeed, realize how much in our circum- 
stances is new ? Truly, man is here, with his old 
nature ; the same creature in all essential faculties 
and aspirations, as in the garden of Eden. But 
how novel are his surroundings ! A thousand ma- 
terial forces aid him in his work. He cultivates 
the earth by machinery ; shoots his own will and 
intelligence through an army of wheels and spin- 
dles, each of which is a better manufacturer than 
himself ; and is driven about the world with a speed 
that makes the legs of man or beast ridiculous. 



MAN AND HIS MODEEN INVENTIONS. 99 

His house is fasliionecl by a stroke of every arti- 
san's liammer since Tubal Cain; for tlie genera- 
tions liave treasured tlieir best ideas of conveni- 
ence nnder his roof. What a marvellous labor 
saving machine is our whole system of American 
business. A merchant in a counting-room on the 
banks of the Hudson, sits with his fingers on the 
pulse of the world's commerce. 

We have all the old literature reprinted at our 
hands ; yet the people are educated by the common 
school, the journal, the lecture, the caucus, the 
convention, and free discussion on every theme — 
a travelling college that keeps np with their haste, 
wherein, " he who runs may read." What a new 
thino; is social life when the increase in home con- 
veniences and means of communication expand a 
neighborhood to a nation, and we need not per- 
sonal contact to know the condition of our beloved 
every hour. 'New ideas of amusement are rapidly 
coming in conflict with the old. Our system of 
government is a capital invention ; for the ballot 
in America means all that king, court, army, no- 
bility, revolution mean abroad. One ballot with 
brains behind it will do what Caesar died to accom- 
plish ; and one election day in JSTew York may 
change the reading of history. What an invention 
is the Protestant Church, founded on the voluntary 



100 -m.au and his modeen inventions. 

system, divorced from the government. A world 
of ecclesiastical trash is superseded by the simple 
idea that every man shall worship God according 
to the dictates of his own manhood. And truly 
what is this Republic, with its fiery energies, 
tearing its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
transforming the wilderness as it goes to fruitful 
States, but the latest invention of man to aid in 
that Christian civilization which is the kingdom 
of God on earth ? Here, then, where the inventive 
spirit has done its utmost, is the problem between 
man and his modern inventions to be solved. 

JSTow, there is astonishing confusion of thought 
among our people in regard to what may reason- 
ably be expected from this gigantic array of 
American inventions. Millions of our population 
are to-day behaving as if our new circumstances 
were to create a millennium ; and, of course, the 
land is full of demagogues, lay and clerical, who 
find it to their own advantage to persuade these 
confused millions that they are already in a Para- 
dise of Freedom. But the thoughtful moral 
teacher must insist that this 'magnificent array of 
contrivances can never do more than furnish new 
opportunities for true manhood. Every new in- 
vention is a new opportunity, and every new 
opportunity imposes a new obligation. 



MAN AND niS MODERN INVENTIONS. 101 

The cultivated citizen of an American city, in 
comparison witli the savage in Is"ebraska, has an 
incomparable advantage in his circumstances ; but 
this advantage finds its compensation in his fearful 
increase of moral obligation. The Indian can nse 
all his opportimities for nobilitj, and sleep half 
the day in his wigwam ; the citizen can only nse 
his privileges by a sleepless vigilande, and the ex- 
ercise of energies unknown to the red man. J^ew 
opportunities do not make new men, or create a 
new civilization; they only call man to arouse 
from his slumber, and put forth some faculty 
hitherto dormant, and fix his eye on a higher 
excellence, and climb up them as up a ladder 
scaling a new heaven. 

And the awful fact about this matter is, that there 
can he no lahor-saving machine for the manufacture 
of character. Man is called to-day to do and be 
what was never before conceived of excellence and 
power; a new world is around him — a world of 
slopes ascending to higher eminences, wandering off 
into a horizon of summits flushed with a glory as 
of angelic lands ; but, alas ! he can possess his new 
kingdom only in the old way. Just as Adam and 
Eve went out the gate of Eden and saw the earth 
before them, and began to mould that energy of 
moral manhood and womanhood which is the 



102 MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 

sovereign power of creation, must the Young 
American pass out the gates of his infant inno- 
cence, and earn a spiritual position bj the sweat of 
the brow and the souL There is only one way to 
be great and good, and that the old way. Spite 
of all modern inventions and opportunities, the 
essential conflict of life is the same. Perhaps we 
sneer at the old Theological Devil ; but it is just as 
hard for us to resist evil as for those who believe 
in him. We scorn the monks, and hermits, and 
ascetics of the old days, yet under our broadcloth 
and satin and fine linen is the same death-grapple 
for manhood that bent Simeon Stylites on his pillar 
thirty years. Experience, character, cannot be in- 
herited ; opportunities can be inherited. You may 
come to your noble father's estate and position, but 
you cannot gain your father's nobility without 
working harder than he, for it is more to be noble 
to-day than in his day. America is the heir of all 
the ages ; every battle of freedom that has shaken 
the earth, every gain in knowledge, comforts, 
policy, has drifted a treasure across the ocean to 
her ; hut the experience of a nation in the use of its 
ojpj^ortunities she cannot inherit j that, she must 
learn for herself. Her character is her own to 
make or lose ; and never was there such a task set 
for a people as to shape a true civilization out of 



MAl^^ AND HIS MODERN INA'ENTIONS. 103 

our circumstances. Invention is botli privilege and 
obligation ; and only in accepting and using both 
is this great problem to be solved. 

Whenever man fulfills this obligation and tries 
with all his might to become a noble being, as his 
opportunities increase, then is realized the law of 
success. " Seeking first the kingdom of God, and 
his righteousness, all these things are added unto 
him." All inventions, save drudgery, relieve man 
from the slavery to material things, and give him 
leisure to cultivate his higher nature. Thus, 
modern machinery will finally abolish slavery and 
ignorant labor. To manage a first-class kitchen is 
beyond the power of Kathleen or Minna, fresh 
from the other side ; they must become educated 
women, or first class employment is closed against 
them. Sleepy old Jonathan or Knickerbocker, 
with his pipe in his mouth, cannot sit on a mowing 
machine ; a man must be wide awake to keep out 
of the way of its sharp wheels, or to follow a horse- 
rake, a planter, or a thresher. Wlioever hasn't 
brains must " stitch, stitch, stitch," and leave her 
brighter cousin to use the sewing machine. A 
fool can be a priest in Italy ; but a minister in a 
Free Protestant Church must be much of a man to 
hold the people. So do all these inventions abolish 
drudgery, and demand culture for their use ; and 



104: MAN AND HIS MODEKN mVENTIONS. 

in our day, a successful farmer and his wife will 
use more science in their dairy or their fields, than 
most of our labor-despising, dilettante young peo- 
ple carry about at the end of the college or acade- 
mical course. Drudgery and the class of drudges 
must gradually disappear, and what has been re- 
garded menial work will become a fit employment 
for the most accomplished people. 

Thus a good deal of time will be saved from the 
lower side of life, that may be used on the higher 
work of building a character in the image of God. 
And a true man will use his leisure for this pur- 
pose. He will recognize in his inventive faculty 
the key to let him out of the dungeon of material 
dependence ; and when he is in the free air and 
light, he will put forth all the sublime and lovely 
attributes of his being. Think of the opportunity 
enjoyed by a young woman for the best culture 
to-day in town, compared with that of her grand- 
mother out in the country fifty years ago. The 
grandmother had no time for cultivation ; to cook, 
wash, bake and sew for self, husband and children 
was the life of a slave ; travelling was slow, popu- 
lation scattered; nature had her under her feet. 
If she became cultivated and noble, it was her 
own great merit toiling against difficulties. The 
grand-daughter can have her work chiefly done by 



MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 105 

macliinery ; the water-pipe is in tlie wall, the light 
flashes at the touch of her finger, the furnace and 
the range warm her and cook her dinner, the sew- 
ing has ceased to be a nightmare ; books, lectures, 
schools, cultivated society, and time enough to use 
all, are at her hand ; she can do just what she has 
the patience to achieve, and be what she will. 
What a world of drudgery is saved to this genera- 
tion ; what centuries of time have been rescued 
from material uses, so that eternity is becoming 
our inheritance. And he who has this, and will 
emj)loy it aright, may become such a man as will 
eclipse the heroism of the past ; a sovereign with 
" all things under his feet," a man to whom we 
can say, in the glorious words of Paul : " All 
things are yours, whether the world, or life, or 
death, or things present, or things to come, all are 
yours." Yes ; this world can even now be used so 
well that it may become the ante-court of Heaven, 
and amid our common opportunities we can realize 
the experience of that immortal life which is only 
the ascending growth of the soul through wider 
spheres of knowledge and power, and beauty and 
love. 

But now suppose man, instead of doing this, does 
the contrary ; accepts the jprivilege and repudiates 
the obligation of this new condition of human cir- 

5* 



106 MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 

cumstances. He does not regard every invention 
as a new oppoxtiinitj Trliicli demands new efforts 
after manliness, bnt clutches it as a fresli occasion 
for selfish indulgence. The wonderful improve- 
ments in modern labor and commerce he prizes 
chiefly as a more expeditious mode of making 
money. The increase in social conveniences is 
only an excuse for luxurious living. The facility 
of communication but enlarges his ambition for 
wide reputation. He abuses the freedom of reli- 
gious worship by refusing to countenance the insti- 
tutions of Christianity, or perverts the church of 
Christ to a movable platform of personal advance- 
ment. Our invaluable privilege of universal male 
suffrage he insults by the refusal to vote, or its 
prostitution to corrupt partisan ends. A free press 
means to him the liberty to flood the land with 
nonsense or scandal, and dilute his intellect by 
saturation in the thin gruel of popular literature. 
And Hepublicanism in America is to him but a 
conceit of selfish liberty to neglect the cause of his 
fellow man, and push his own whim to its utmost 
bound. Can there be any question what will be 
the consequences of such a criminal abandonment 
of the new obligations of an American citizen? 
Is any sober man so near a fool as to dream that 
he can use this splendid array of opportunities in 



MAN AND HIS MODERN INTENTIONS. lOT 

the new world for selfish ends and come ont safely ? 
Are we so far gone in national conceit as to be- 
lieve that God loves his children in these IJnited 
States so mncli better than the rest of mankind, 
that he will permit ns to ignore this eternal law, 
that whosoevcT doth not irrvprove his opportunities 
shall lose them or find them his curse f Let the 
ministers of religion, sjDite of the rage of the 
demagogues who live on the degeneracy of the 
State, reiterate the lesson that if man does not 
grow in character in America as he gains in 
privileges, his new inventions, will not save 
him ; nay, will become his special tormentors ; and 
from th*^ abnse of the very freedom of which he 
boasts, will come his more fearful destruction. 

For see how these new inventions turn against 
him, when he makes himself morally incompetent 
to govern them. If a merchant has made up his 
mind to care for nothing but business, God help 
him in a modern counting-room ; for, instead of 
the moderate and contracted life of the trader of 
former days which offered many an occasion for 
quiet and enjoyment, he is tied into a network of 
nerves that enfolds the globe, and his heart beats, 
and his imagination shudders at every change of 
business at home or abroad. Tlie anxiety of mil- 
lions of traders, the competition of nations, the 



108 MAN AND HIS MODERN INYENTIONS. 

hopes and fears of a world-wide speculation come 
like fiends to worry his poor brain ; and he is as 
surely imprisoned from the nobler joys of existence 
as if he were buried in one of his own mines, or 
nailed up in his own warehouse. Behold the fam- 
ily that eagerly prostitutes its wealth to luxury 
and social ambition. No sensuality of ancient 
Rome or Ephesus or Corinth so quickly annihi- 
lated its victims, as the luxury of New York and 
Philadelphia, and Chicago ; no social ambition is 
so demeaning as this American rage for an aris- 
tocracy of money. What avails a free Protestantism 
to a man who has not moral courage to declare his 
religious opinions, but must enact the farce of the 
hypocrite every Sunday before his Creator on the 
crimson seats of a fashionable temple ? Gracious 
Heaven! Have martyrs died, and saints lived 
through persecutions, and Christians toiled and 
thought for eighteen centuries for this, that Ameri- 
can Protestants should be the cowards that they 
have become — ^hiding within a new church, built 
on credit, at every little cloud of dust raised by 
the Devil in the streets ? A free Protestantism in- 
deed, when its liberty is interpreted as the license 
to transform the church of a crucified Saviour to a 
drawing-room, and the preacher of God's law to 
the gentleman usher in an ecclesiastical ceremony, 



MAN AND HIS MODERN INTENTIONS. 109 

and the awful prerogative of moral judgment to 
a separation of patrician slieep from plebeian 
goats. 

If any one doubts tbat a good man is needed 
to wield a Free Press, let him open a morning 
paper and find bis own name dragged before the 
communitj in connection wath some criminal or 
foolish charge, or assailed for his own opinions with 
barbarian rancor, and comfort himself with the 
assm*ance that he will be the subject of execration 
or ridicule from the Bay of Fundj to San Fran- 
cisco. Freedom of amusement is a great privilege, 
but when it turns out the freedom to get the 
delirium tremens and make one's self an appendage 
to a race-horse, an infamous woman, or a soul- 
destroying career of fashion, there is no question 
from what quarter that man's tormentors will come. 
Hie ballot is the last result of human government ; 
the prize of all the revolutions that have shaken 
the nations ; and now think of 20,000 men in the 
State of ITew York, and as many in Pennsylvania, 
the two most powerful States in the Union, wield- 
ing this fearful instrument, not one of them able 
to read the Constitution or write the name of 
America; then contemplate the increasing thous- 
ands in our more barbarous States, till you descend 
to tlie bloody arena of the territories, where the 



110 MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 

man who has the best rifle, and is least scrupulous 
as to its use, carries the election ; and tell me if we 
may not vote ourselves into as terrible calamities 
this side of the water, as any into which the people 
of Europe have ever fought themselves ? 

If we are to have no greater elevation of man- 
hood and womanhood in this age than the past, let 
us pray Heaven to destroy all our new inventions. 
For out of the opportunities of a people comes its 
reward, if it be worthy, or its retribution if it 
degenerates. We know the worst that old world 
privileges can inflict on a nation when man falls 
away from them. What he has suifered in Kome, 
in France, in Austria, history records; and that 
could be endured again. But what a fearful 
looking-for of judgment w^ill there be for Ameri- 
cans, if they go down below their circumstances, 
and in the strife for selfish success forget their high 
obligation to God and man. Think of our com- 
mercial panics that scourge us for ignorance, haste 
and dishonesty in business ; of railroads, and steam- 
ships and machinery everywhere built by unfaith- 
ful workmen, and managed by heedless and wicked 
superintendency ; of the possibility of wreck to 
health and life implied in any street of modern 
residences inhabited by an effeminate population ; 
of the chaos of atheism and fanaticism into which 



MAN a:nd his modern esu^entions. Ill 

our popular Protestantism can any clay be plunged 
by a j)eople who have forgotten God and man ; of 
the frantic gabbling of twenty-five millions of con- 
ceited tongues, educated on tbe trash that is daily 
hawked through the streets, and bound to settle 
every problem that the sages of the generations 
have left unsolved ; of a nation like ours, driven 
into a war with a combined Europe, or a worse 
contest of sister States, by citizens too wicked to 
vote right, or too indifferent to vote intelligently ! 
Is this hell that yawns beneath our new civilization 
a pleasant place to look into ? 

Ah ! 'the old theological lake of fire is not the 
only hell with which the preacher in our land may 
threaten his hearers ; nearer to them are the 
" infernal regions " that America could easily 
become with a population below its opportunities. 
Here might be seen a hell, where every other train 
ran off the track, and the dying shriek of the 
drowning passenger on the sea was caught by the 
sinking boat on the Hudson, and prolonged by the 
exploding craft upon the lakes, and swept down the 
Mississippi in a w^ail of death to the far off wreck- 
strewn shore of the Pacific — where dyspepsia and 
consumption, and " general debility " dwelt in 
every luxurious house, and the pale face of woman 
and the dimmed eye of man were the emblematic 



112 MAN AND HIS MODEEN INVENTIONS. 

skeleton at every feast ; where pecuniary disaster 
lurked in every bargain ; and a reputation died at 
every stroke of tlie editor's pen ; and the cliurcli 
pulled down Christ, and set up some fonl abomina- 
tion of our barbarism in His place ; and the State 
was in a chronic revolution! "VYhat untold woes 
are hidden in this array of calamities, not fanciful, 
but such as even now, in part, we know — woes as 
new as the latest fashions, and as fearful as novel. 
Pray Heaven to avert such a fate, and second that 
prayer, by living up to your advantages. For 
should we get under the feet of our Inventions, no 
invasion of Goths and Yandals could be compared 
with the terrors of a State where man was the 
sport of his own contrivances, and every new 
agency with which his busy brain had peopled the 
earth, would be charged to an unhuman enemy for 
his persecution. 

This is the inevitable law, eternally enacted for 
every soul, that if man " seeketh first the king- 
dom of God, and his righteousness, all these things 
shall be added unto him ;" if, first, he seeketh his 
own selfishness, all things he has made shall turn 
against him. And thus the world he has created 
about himself, when viewed from the mount of 
Christian character, shall glow like the descending 
slopes of paradise beneath the sunshine of God's 



MAN AND HIS MODERN INTENTIONS. 113 

approving love ; but viewed from the pit of un- 
cliristian degeneracy, shall glare like an impending 
firmament of storms lit by the lightnings of retri- 
butive doom. Do you need the application of this 
law to the public of to-day, and the land in which 
we live ? Do you not understand that all our real 
prosperity as individuals and as a people, comes 
from the manly use which is made of our new life, 
and that all the varied troubles that harass our 
families and our States, and the more depressing 
fears that haunt those who can think and feel, are 
but the inevitable result of our neglect of Ameri- 
can obligations? In the last seventy-five years, 
what have we not invented ? Almost everything 
that makes us a " peculiar people," until we live in 
an outward world of our own. So far have we 
pushed out from the landmarks of the past that we 
are now drifting over an unexplored sea, of which 
there is no chart in any book of history, where only 
a force of character, such as was never before 
known, can save us. Have we that force of char- 
acter adequate to guide the ship of our civilization 
to a safe port ? I do not know what new energies 
may be developed, what great heads may be born, 
or what latent virtues may be dislodged by coming 
trials ; but it looks now to a reflecting man as if 
character in America was creeping on at a snail's 



114 MA^ AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 

pace, and opportunity running on the wings of the 
wind. 

Our commercial panic, which lately excited us 
into semi-insanity, was not an isolated affair, it was 
one phase of a chronic American disease. That 
disease is the semi-barbarism of the people, where- 
by it liajypens that they have not moral wisdom 
enough to inanage the involved machinery they have 
set ujy on this continent. It is said that a celebrated 
engineer, having constructed an elaborate piece of 
machinery, on witnessing its first exhibition before a 
crowd, was so bewildered by the confusion of wheels, 
and mingled hum of axles, and shouts of applause, 
that he sprung into it and was torn in shreds by his 
own invention. Somewhat like this is the matter 
with the American people. They are confused with 
their own institutions. It needs an angelic clear- 
ness of mind and elevation of soul to guide aright 
this fearful mechanism of Republican govern- 
ment, church, literature, business, and society ; but 
through a continent of whirling forces we rush as 
wildly, and disport ourselves with as little fore- 
thought and firmness as if we ran over an open 
prairie. What wonder that we receive our retri- 
bution on every hand. Now the disease breaks 
out in social life, and details of sensuality, luxury, 
crime and rottenness of domestic ties send a thrill 



MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 115 

of horror to every heart. Now it is a panic in the 
chnrches, Romanism and Atheism threatening the 
people and a Protestant ecclesiasticism too bnsy in 
fighting over shreds of doctrine, or building Sun- 
day drawing-rooms for the elect, to stay the storm 
of error and sin. ]^ow, our national ignorance 
looms above us like a black cloud, and our new 
agencies of intelligence are perverted to its advo- 
cates. Again, it is a sectional political controversy 
and a revolutionary campaign wherein it requires 
no superabundance of insight to discover barbarism 
and civilization fighting over their old conflict be- 
tween man and man. And now the sympathies of 
the people are wrung even to insensibility by 
repeated disaster on land and sea. And now our 
commercial system explodes, and faith between 
man and man departs, and the nation, like Tantalus, 
sees its own abundance hanging as in mockery 
above its reach, while it wildly talks of starvation. 
These varied agitations are but the symptoms of 
one disease which visits in turn every limb of the 
body politic. We are living below our opportu- 
nities, we are under the feet of our own inven- 
tions ; and instead of rallying a new moral force of 
American manhood and womanhood for the crisis, 
we are dreaming that some new contrivance will 
get us out of th^ difficulty. How vain this hope ! 



116 MAlSr AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 

Not new inventions^ hict 'better men to manage those 
we have, is the need of the times. We are debating 
wliether we shall repudiate our manliood in 
America, and go in for a "free fight" for the 
selfish enjoyment of American privileges ; already 
the shuddering throes in our national constitution 
proclaim the danger; and upon the decision of 
this question rests our success or disaster. 

I speak not to those who scorn the word of warn- 
ing ; but I ask thoughtful men and women if they 
can say in conscience that their own elevation of 
character is what it should be to control these 
agencies of our time ; are you honest enough, pure, 
intelligent enough; sufficiently economical and 
patriotic, and prudent ? Do you live like wise men 
and women, determined to increase in rectitude as 
you increase in privileges, or are you catching the 
popular insanity ? And if your conscience rebukes 
you for short coming, what shall we say of those 
who are below; the great whirling, frantic mass 
who drift hither and thither with no care for their 
own souls or the good of the State ? 

I have no professional opinions to oflfer on the 
late business complications, for I do not know just 
what screw is loose this time in our complex system 
of American trade. But I do know what some of 
you perhaps do not, that in such a time every dis- 



MAN AND HIS MODEKN INVENTIONS. 117 

honest, or careless, or ignorant transaction of the 
past years comes in to make " confusion worse con- 
founded ;" and commerce reaps the bitter fruit of 
a colossal selfishness and a corroding untruth. 
We have traded in an unchristian manner, and 
here is the retribution. We have worshipped our 
calf of gold, and now it is ground to dust, and we 
are drinking the fiery draught. Once in twenty 
years we explode in a general panic ; if we loved 
our neighbor as ourself in our trade, would it be so 
with us ? 

Let these experiences teach us that never was it 
so imperative that man should rule his inventions 
as now. JS^ever was Christian manhood so essen- 
tial to safety; never degeneracy of any kind so 
fatal as just here to-day. Will we not arouse and 
be worthy to wield these forces of our own crea- 
tion ? Young men, young women, will not you 
become the kind of people America needs to guide 
her many-sided life and make it a blessing to the 
world? For present embarrassments and fears I 
have but this counsel : Do not lose the manliness 
you have in any confusion; come out of every 
'' panic " better and wiser than you went in. In 
good time confidence will be restored, and your 
drooping fortunes will revive ; but do not then for- 
get the lesson of to-day. Let every man resolve 



118 MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 

that henceforth his character shall be his chief 
anxiety; let every woman keep her womanhood 
high above her estate in life. Thus will a slow re- 
action of health visit the feverish body of society. 
Thus will an example be afforded of that Christian 
consecration whose wider prevalence is the only 
power which in the fight between man and his 
modern inventions will lead him to victory and 
make his sovereignty in this world the type of the 
government of God. 



Y. 

THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

At the first Exhibition in the Isew York Crystal 
Palace, I observed a Gold Dollar covered with 
finelj-engraved letters, which, on the application 
of a glass, were resolved into the Lord's Prayer. 
Amid that dazzling show of use and beanty, I 
remember nothing so distinctly as this new Ameri- 
can Dollar, adorned with the oldest utterance of 
Christian devotion. By its intrinsic nature, the 
representative of the wondrous results of human 
industry around me ; by the date of its coinage 
and its image and superscri23tion, the type of the 
most characteristic age of our Eepublican civiliza- 
tion — suggesting our first great war of conquest, 
the golden visions of Cahfornia, and the great 
development of heroic enterprise awakened by 
this period; the symbol of the great material 
achievements of our country, and almost the god 
of its idolatry ; yet through that inscription seem- 

119 



120 THE GOLD DOLLAR 

ingly consecrated to the Father whose law is the 
real constitution of freemen, and whose love can 
alone save ns from our own folly and sin, what 
wonder that the objects around me appeared insig- 
nificant comj)ared with this speaking emblem of a 
Christian society ? I have forgotten almost every- 
thing I saw in this Exhibition; it floats in my 
memory like a gilded mist, in the centre of which 
hovers this Dollar most clearly defined. I know 
not the intention of the engraver in this singular 
fancy ; but it was one of those things which, once 
done, become forever symbolic. It has preached 
to me so often on the great theme of our nation's 
peril and hope, that I will now declare to you some 
of its weighty lessons : 

The Gold Dollar: What does it r&presentf 
How shall we get it f And what shall we do with 
it? Let this be the subject of the present dis- 
course. 

I need not inform a Christian reader that all 
material things are representative of spiritual reali- 
ties. "Kie faintest sjDcck of dust that floats across 
a ray of light is the type of an eternal fact, as the 
noblest human form that ever walked the earth 
was the appropriate incarnation of the Redeeming 
Love. Every well-instructed child can tell what 
the Gold Dollar is — a bit of ore wrenched from the 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 121 

Btern clutch of California rocks, refined, alloyed 
and finally, at one blow of the great hammer in 
the Mint, struck into coin. But into what wonder- 
ful relations that bit of shining metal is introduced 
bj one decisive blow, not all the men and women 
in America can fully declare. For, as from a new 
birth, it rises from metal to money ; and its natural 
worth as a piece of gold, is quite sunk in its spirit- 
ual value as the representative currency of the 
world's chief Eepublic. 

From the earliest history of man, money has 
been as powerful as to-day. In the life of every 
people, ancient and modern, it has been a control- 
ling force. Eighteen centuries ago, before this 
continent was discovered by civilized men, Jesus 
Christ in Judea told his disciples that the love of 
money is the root of all evil ; and the panic of the 
last year is the commentary the American people 
are compelled to write on the margin of that awful 
scripture. It is all this, because it is the most per- 
manent representative of that complex assemblage 
of possessions and powers which we call "This 
World." Money is the symbol of material things ; 
not in their simply material aspect, but as they are 
related to man. Wherever man touches this world 
he must have a convenient emblem of what he can 
.6wn in it, and what it can do for him ; and that 

6 



122 THE GOLD DOLLAK. 

emblem is money. Whether a belt of wampum, a 
load of iron rings, a bank bill, or a gold dollar, 
money is always the same : the representative of 
the uses of this world to the human soul. Of no 
value in itself, its values are unestimated while 
used as the type of this perpetual human relation. 
So this little Gold Dollar runs ever to and fro 
over the charmed cord that unites the soul and the 
world; passing from hand to hand, it transmits 
earthly necessities, comforts, luxuries, hopes, ener- 
gies, that terminate in worldly success, all indi- 
vidual power and position, all public grandeur and 
domination. I give this Dollar to my customer, 
and thereby endow him with a new power in- 
American civilization ; and as far -as human suc- 
cess to-day is involved in the possessions and 
achievements which relate to this state of being 
and this state of action, this Dollar confers it. 

So we may say that all the great visible America 
is compressed into this little Gold Dollar, for it 
represents the material aspects of the Eepublic. 
And were our eyes clear enough, we might behold 
delineated within its narrow rim the broad acres of 
American agriculture — ^fields of waving grass, hills 
of solemn forests, prairies of ripening grain, lonely 
plantations and reeking rice swamps, tilled by joy 
ous freemen, or scratched by lazy and sullen slave,; 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 123 

Beneath would appear the veins of coal underlying 
whole States; deep caverns grim with iron, or 
rocks of marble cropping out from the sides of 
JSTew England hills ; mountains of copper on Lake 
Superior, and rivers flowing over beds of gold into 
the Pacific. And girdling all with snowy sails, 
would Commerce weave her mystic dance about 
the coast, and every river beach and shore of inland 
sea be washed by the retreating wave of the steam- 
ship; and a snarl of iron cords would bind the land 
every year into a more inextricable knot of blended 
interests. Then what a picture of the varied indus- 
try of these millions ; factories wherein is concen- 
trated the invention of four thousand years ; me- 
chanics that arm man with the powers of a god. 
What a vision of comfort ; towns and villages lying 
under the shade of country elms : great cities over- 
looking the rivers and the ocean. And with this, 
how much that goes to ennoble man ; the School- 
house sown over the continent ; the Press toiling 
day and night in the service of the soul ; the 
Church warning the traveller a hundred times a 
day that there is a God ; Art, that ever pleads for 
beauty; the Family, that mirrors heaven; Govern- 
ment, the imitation on earth of the justice that 
rules the universe. All this would pass as in a pan- 
oramic vision across this little yellow disc — a min- 



124 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

iature of the America of to-day. Who wonders at 
the desire of men to gain this Gold Dollar, which 
is the talisman introducing the humblest son of the 
Republic to the enjoyment of all its opportunities? 

But the Gold Dollar cannot be this without being 
a great deal more. For this great yisible America 
is tied to the soul of every human being that dwells 
therein, and is, at any moment of her career, the 
type of the average state of the American mind. 
The meaning of this vast heterogeneous appearance 
is this alone ; that here man, having reached a new 
and singular state of culture — in which the noblest 
theories, and the loftiest aspirations, are mingled 
with the most degrading inhumanities — ^has stamp- 
ed himself on the new continent, and in American 
civilization drawn a picture of his own soul. 

So this Gold Dollar, representing that visible 
civilization, has also a moral significance, and its 
inscription is the national idea of life, its objects of 
worship, its sense of duty, its consciousness of im- 
mortality. If those spiritual ideals of the country 
could be read on its face, as I read the dollar in the 
Crystal Palace, I fear the Lord's Prayer would not 
be found thereon inscribed; but quite another 
statement of religion, in which a Christian profes- 
sion would be strangely mingled with a record of 
heathen practices. And could the real creed of 



THE GOr,D DOLLAR. 125 

America be written thus on her gold dollar ; could 
the secret, potent ideal of life that sways the forces 
of her nationality be compressed into a few words, 
and there read by every man who handles it, what 
an almost incredible distance would appear be- 
tween the prayer of Jesus in Palestine and the peti- 
tion of the great Eepublic to-day ! We might then 
behold how slowly the world gravitates towards 
that divine love incarnate in the Saviour, and, by 
the slowness of its approach, measure at once the 
depth of its estrangement from God, and the 
mighty power of his redeeming grace. 

But not alone is the Gold Dollar the emblem of 
the national ideal of spiritual affairs ; it performs 
the same symbolic office for each of us. True, a 
dollar is the same to every man as long as he wishes 
to buy bread ; but when taken as the representa- 
tive of his character, what different inscriptions 
would it bear ! In each man's hand it is a pecu- 
liar thing, bearing the image and superscrij)tion of 
his soul. For a dollar is really to each one of us 
the object proposed in gaining it, and the motive 
that dictates its use. Could every American, when 
he receives it, behold engraved on its face some 
picture explanatory of his motives in its acquisi- 
tion, what a startling gospel would be read off 
every hour in the day, all over the land ! To one 



J 26 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

man would appear tlie doleful picture of liis brother 
in chains, his body stamped with the marks of pro- 
perty, his soul groping in his dark prison towards 
a raj of God's holy light of freedom. Another 
would behold a ruined home cursed by the demon 
of the bottle which he has sent in there to do its 
work of hell. To a third might appear a youth 
passing into the sad blight of honesty and honor, 
corrupted by it, and changed from a man to a 
sharper. To the murderer what a vision of his vic- 
tim lying plundered and bleeding in some lonely 
spot, lighted by flickering flames that will burn 
deeper and deeper into his writhing soul ! Let the 
corrupt ruler look at his Dollar, and see there a pic- 
ture of his country insulted and disgraced before 
the world by his wicked bribe. Let the maiden in 
her bridal array consult this mirror, and perchance 
to her startled vision will appear sensual and covet- 
ous age, leading captive ambitious girlhood by the 
hire of gold. Might not the wearied merchant at 
his midnight toil for more wealth, would he look, 
into this circle, behold his prodigal son, his imbe- 
cile daughter, his wife changed from the maid he 
loved to the scheming matron who now leads him 
chained to her car of social success? Could 
every form of suffering, degradation, meanness, 
crime that men encounter in gaining this dollar. 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 127 

appear on its face when they took it into their 
hand, what a sight were there ! Yet it is all there 
as truly as if the magic picture were discerned ; for 
every bad man's dollar is the type of his sin ; every 
dollar gained by fraud and crime, by the unchris- 
tian devotion to gain, or the sacrifice of any ele- 
ment of manhood, is stained by the prostitution of 
the soul ; and to such may we say in the words of 
the blunt and honest Apostle James : " Your gold 
and silver is cankered ; and the rust of them shcdl 
he a witness agaiyist yoii^ and shcdl eat your flesh as 
it ioerefi7'ey 

But what a different thino^ is the Dollar when it 
represents the putting forth of industry for the 
noblest uses of life ! Tlie father vviio toils to sus- 
tain his home and make it the image of heaven, 
may behold thereon the beloved circle, the ruddy 
eveniug glow, the sweet faces lit by love and peace. 
Tlie poor girl sewing in her garret to save her old 
decrepit mother from starvation, if she remain pure 
and thankful to God, may see an angel standing in 
the little golden mirror. The heroic mother sav- 
ing and toiling for her darling boy may see a noble 
man in the Senate of his country, pouring forth a 
nation's rising indignation against a woeful wrong, 
till the pictured face of Washington almost smiles 
afresh from the walls, and the enemies of man 



128 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

gnash their teeth with infernal rage. What a Dol 
lar was that which Fulton first received at New 
York for a fare on his new vessel ; he says he felt 
half ashamed to take it — but if he kept it until he 
reached Albany, he could have seen all the rivers, 
lakes, and oceans of the world ebbing and flowing, 
and his vessels flying to and fro like the minister- 
ing spirits of the world's new day. The true artist's 
Dollar is but a frame, in which he beholds new 
forms of loveliness and majesty. The right-hearted 
citizen of our land, when he receives it as the re- 
ward of a day's toil, may behold it radiant with a 
patriot's hopes. The author, teacher, minister of 
religion may not fear to soil their hands with it 
for to them it is not base unless they have stained 
the whiteness of their genius by selling its power 
as a slave in the service of sin. The great states 
man who has come out of oflice uncontaminated 
with bribes, can behold thereon the page of history 
whereon his name burns with a white light amid 
annals of infamy. And in private station, many is 
the good man who can read off the Lord's Prayer 
from his Dollar, and feel no sense of incongruity. 
So is this little coin the representative of our rela- 
tion to our country ; base or beautiful as we have 
been in gaining it. So is it the symbol of our rela- 
tion to this world • and whatever use we propose 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 129 

to make of our earthly circumstances is there re- 
corded. So is it the type of our position towards 
God ; and the man who can honestly write the 
Saviour's Prayer on his Dollar has overcome the 
world by consecrating all its opportunities to the 
sublime office of fashionino- a character in the 
image of "the perfect man, the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ." 

When, therefore, I proceed to answer the ques- 
tion, How to get the Gold Dollar^ you will under- 
stand that I am speaking only of that which 
represents the best manhood in its relations to this 
world — the Dollar inscribed with the Lord's Prayer. 
For all kinds are to be obtained, and there are all 
kinds of teachers to instruct in tlie acquisition. 
One class of these instructors, whose certificate runs 
back to the money-changers whom Jesus scourged 
out of the Temple, protest against the interference 
of the clergy in financial matters ; just as a class of 
statesmen, descended from Pilate and Herod, are 
grieved at the interference of the teachers of reli- 
gion in public affairs. But let them not be cast 
down ; as far as I know the clergy, they do not 
attempt to infringe on their vocation of teaching 
the art of " gaining the whole world and losing the 
soul," In all the tricks by which the base counter- 
feit Dollar, which symbolizes the loss of manhood, is 

6* 



130 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

gained, tliey are far too expert to dread any rivalry. 
But when it comes to telling tlie yonng how to 
gain tlie Dollar that gleams with the light of an 
elevated character, we have a word to say, since 
manhood is our province. I do not here attempt 
to describe the special operations in the varied 
forms of Imman effort by which this consecrated 
Dollar may be obtained — they are as numerons as 
the honorable professions and the righteous men in 
the world — but I maintain that the method in all 
is the same, and I only proclaim the everlasting 
law of Christian acquisition. 

The Dollar is a new privilege in the life of this 
world, for which every man should pay his fair 
equivalent of work. Labor of some description ; 
of the hands, or the mind, or subtler toil of noble 
living, is the God-ordained condition of the best 
earthly opportunities. For labor is not alone of the 
hands, and the worker on matter is not alone 
worthy of his hire. Whoever thinks a shorter way 
to do any necessary thing, or a better thing to do, 
or a finer grace of manliness to be obtained, de- 
serves the Dollar, that he may occupy a wider field 
of efibrt, wherein he may bless mankind with his 
new discovery. And there are those who live so 
grandly that all the gold and jewels in the world 
are a poor tribute to their worth, and we are 



THE GOLD DOLLAK. 131 

honored by giving tliem money, tliiit tlieir orbit of 
love and light may evermore expand. Service is 
manifold, and the worker in spiritual stuff is most 
deserving. Work alone deserves the Dollar ; not 
that a bit of gold can j^ay any man for honest toil ; 
but it is the key which unlocks the door to a new 
region of advantages, to which the laborer has 
gained the right to ascend. Therefore, let no man 
or woman, old or young, dream that laziness de- 
serves anything but starvation and disgrace. Who- 
ever will not work in some good way while he can 
— or when his strength is gone, live so nobly that 
his services increase as his body declines — shall 
not obtain the consecrated Dollar ; if he obtain any 
it shall be a curse to his soul, for the lazy man's 
gold is a key that opens the ward of a lower hell, 
to which his sin has doomed him. ISTeither shall 
make-believe work deserve the true reward. Who- 
ever gets his living by doing what hinders society, 
or is superfluous in its occupations, only disgraces 
himself; for tliere is a valuable thing for every 
soul to do that is born into this world, and whoever 
plays at work does the double mischief of leaving 
his task undone, and perpetrating a new sham. 
Oh ! wdiat a wreck does this savage old school-mas- 
ter, Panic, make with all this trumpery of unreal 
labor ! How do whole professions disappear, and 



132 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

whole classes of men shrink to their native poverty, 
before his relentless gaze I Better live with him 
and munch yonr crust, than feast with a prosperity 
built on false pretences ; for the world knows what 
it needs, and there will be confusion in the money 
market a good many centuries yet, until all men 
get into their own place and do their full measure 
of their own work. 

Then do your best work on the highest plane of 
your manhood. Multitudes of men think business 
means going into the lower regions of their life to 
gain a base Dollar, and then coming up and put- 
ting on their clean clothes to enjoy it. But do you 
rather array yourselves in the purple robes of your 
largest manhood to go about your daily toil. Put 
your whole soul into your common life. Put in 
truth. Let every blow you strike come faithfully 
down on a real spot ; and as you value yourself, do 
not sink to a dishonesty though buried deep as 
the bottom of the sea ; for you cannot slight your 
work, or cheat your neighbor, or dodge your obli- 
gation, without taking it out of your own charac- 
ter, and erasing a letter of the Lord's Prayer from 
your Dollar. Put in patience and persistence — ^for 
there is no good thing, though hung up in the 
seventh heavens, that cannot be reached by suffi- 
cient toil ; and no scandal, though rooted down in 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 133 

the seventli hell, that cannot be plucked up by him 
that " enclureth to the end." Put in moderation — 
for a crazy man only gravitates to a strait-jacket in 
any region of life. Put in skill — ^for you are bound 
to do your work better in some way than it was 
ever done before. Put in reverence for man — for 
true work is always in his service — and your Savi- 
our came to minister to us all ; and to defraud in 
your toil is such an insult to him and disgrace to 
you as all the material prosperity upon earth can- 
not conceal. Put in self-reverence; love for 
family ; respect for just law ; patriotic devotion to 
your country's real good ; philanthropic concern 
for all men — ^i*everence for man implies all these. 
And no job is really done until all these appear 
in its doing. Do nothing in your work you are 
ashamed to publish to the world, to yourself, to 
your God. 

Young woman, receive no Dollar that degrades 
your womanhood. If you are living as true daugh- 
ter, wife, mother, friend, you are not in degrading 
dependence, but it is your right to receive as 
the privilege of man to give, the Dollar rightly 
earned. But oh ! beware the curse of taking the 
base Dollar ; of tempting man to earn it by the 
disgrace of his manlinesss : for could you see your- 
self walking in fine raiment l)Ought by money 



134 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

wrung from your neighbor in tlie bitter competi- 
tions of dishonest trade ; filched from the slow-wit- 
ted ; plundered from the foolish, the unfortunate, 
the desparing — as the angels behold jou ; could 
every dollar that goes to buy luxuries for your social 
state and position in the world, reveal the history 
of its acquisition, would you be able to face your 
present success ? Pitch your wants on a key so 
low that they can all be satisfied by the conse- 
crated Dollar, and scorn any advantage gained by 
other coin as you would shrink from pollution. 

Say not this method of getting the Dollar is 
impracticable — a minister's fancy! For the only 
practical thing in business is to get money that 
represents the best manhood ; and to sell your soul 
at retail to the devil, for a Dollar a fibre, is about 
the most unpractical sort of speculation in which a 
shrewd man can engage. I know it is not very 
easy to get rich in this way. It is very easy to get 
rich in America in many lower ways ; but all the 
" fine gold " thus gained is " dimmed " in the get- 
ting, and we shall go down hill as we accumulate 
these riches. And of all men who thus obtain the 
Dollar, Jesus said : " It is easier for a camel to go 
tln'ough the eye of a needle than for them to enter 
the kingdom of God." It is as hard in America as 
it ever was in tlie world to earn the consocrated 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 105 

Dollar ; biit the ambitiou to gain it is worthy our 
jouiig men, and challenges their finest talent and 
their uttermost heroism. For to desire the conse- 
crated Dollar is nothino^ less than to Ions; for a 
larger field of usefulness ; to wish for more of the 
world to fill with love ; to pray for the power to 
be a providence among men. Such a love of 
money is the root of nobility, and whoever acquires 
wealth that represents the best he knows and can 
do in life, has treasure laid up in heaven. 

This style of getting the Gold Dollar will insure 
the true method of its use. The fortune meanly 
gained will be meanly spent ; for the plain reason 
that the same man who degraded himself to obtain 
his money, unless he becomes a better man, will 
continue to act from the same low level, and 
scourge the community worse in the use than in 
the getting of his wealth. The reason of so much 
criminal and foolish expenditure of money in 
America is found in the wicked modes of acquir- 
ing property. Is it strange that the scamp who 
has sprung a trap in speculution and caught a for- 
tune, should go on speculating in higher things 
than railroad stocks, and prostitute his ill-gotten 
substance to pollute the ballot-box, or bribe the 
community into granting him a social position he 
does not deserve ? Will not the vouu<x man wlic 



136 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

fills Ms pocket at the gaming-table, or by some 
shrewd legal way of swindling, conclude to buy 
the privilege of unlimited sensuality, or naturally 
aspire to the chance of spreading himself as an 
omnipresent coxcomb through the wide limbo of 
fashionable life ? Is it surprising that a wife who 
shuts her eyes on the questionable tricks of her 
husband's trade, and temj)ts him to new meanness 
by her prodigality, will use her gold in spoiling 
the bodies and souls of her children, and putting 
out the light of heaven in her home ? Whoever 
gains money like a knave will sjDend it like a snob, 
because the money-making sharper by success is 
naturally develo23ed into the upstart of society. I 
want no better test of a man's way of using than a 
knowledge of his manner of getting ; and when I 
see ostentation, or avarice, or hard, cold selfishness 
in the owner of large possessions, I can prophesy 
that if the whole story were told, his title of posses- 
sion would be stained by many a damning sin 
before God, and outrage done to man. But when 
the Dollar has been so truly earned that it repre- 
sents the best manhood of its possessor, I need no 
assurance that the same nobility will preside over 
its use, and bless the world as much in the spend- 
ing as in the gaining. 

Money is the talisman that opens the wards of 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 137 

all regions of life, and lie wlio lias it can buy op- 
portunities of many kinds. Eut since nobody is 
rich enough to buy all the opportunities of Ameri- 
can society, or great enough to use them if they 
were possessed, there must be a choice in expendi- 
ture, and economy in use. Every man must save 
somewhere; it is honorable to stint ourselves in 
some directions, that we may obtain better things 
in others. Therefore, the wisest man is he who 
spends his Dollar to buy the opportunity most use- 
ful for his own growth in character and service to 
the world. Only a fool throws away his money on 
things that degrade himself or positions he can not 
occupy with honor to the people ; but the greatest 
bargain is made when we buy those opportunities 
that we can fill full of our own power and make 
permanent ]30sitions of Christian influence among 
men. The bodily necessities of life are very few. 
Our Saviour while in the flesh was poorer than any 
of you whom I address ; and almost every man can 
have something to purchase the position he can 
best use for himself and the world. 

Have you then an especial talent for any honor- 
able trade, or have you discovered a new and finer 
way of doing any necessary kind of work ? Save 
everywhere else, and buy the opportunity to de- 
velop your genius in this direction — for this is the 



138 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

best gift you can bestow on society, and tliroiigli 
Bucb an elevation of labor, freedom and religion 
will gain a better chance among men. A true la- 
borer, farmer, meclianic, merchant, who tlius fills 
his profession brim full of his best mental and 
moral life, is a centre of power in any community, 
and his position is a seminary in the arts of a 'con- 
secrated business. Do your abilities fit you best 
for social influence ? then spend your money on a 
home, broad, elegant, hospitable; only remember 
to be so great that men shall forget your house 
while looking at you. Take your position in society, 
and then teach your neighbors Christian manners. 
Christian hospitality. Christian amusements. Let 
your family circle become a school of social wisdom 
and beauty ; and win America from the worship 
of tapestry and gilding, and barbaric luxury and 
habits, to the love of true elegance and the grace 
of real gentility. Have you an unmistakable genius 
for letters or art, or are your children gifted with 
power to charm and bless the world ? Then spend 
for the best culture of the mind. Let fine house, 
fine clothes, society, business, sink to subordinate 
matters, and buy the company of the best wisdom, 
the instruction of the most accomplished in the 
arts. And when gained, stand on your own man- 
hood, and spend all yonr life to purchase greater 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 139 

opportunity to moYe the world in this excellent 
WRj. Are yon gifted with that pecnliar combina- 
tion of faculties that fit you to heal the sick, to 
plead the law, to prophesy in the pulpit or outside 
the Church, on the people's platform ? Let no ex- 
pense be spared to get you into your place, and 
when there, do not spoil everything by using your 
position to make money, but use your money to en- 
large your position, and trust to your service in 
that way for your vindication among men. You 
are born to rule, to live an executive life. You 
understand the movements of public afiairs, and 
can keep cool and calm, and grow in manhood 
amid the fierce heats of political conflict. Use all 
the money you can get honestly to obtain a post of 
influence. Do not buy voters, or bribe editors, or 
insult any man by proposing any partnership in 
meanness : but buy honestly the opportunity to 
serve your country. Buy a newspaper, buy a 
stump, buy a standing-place, and begin to talk. 
Spend your money to sow the land from ocean to 
ocean with stirring appeals and invincible reasons 
for freedom ; and every shoot you plant shall spring 
up in time a free and pure American voter. "When 
you get power, do not try to seize a new place, 
before you know the duties of the old. If only a 
policeman, put your whole soul into your baton. 



140 THE GOLD DOLLAR. 

and let it fall like a bolt of lightning upon the evil- 
doer, and flash like a ray of light before the op- 
pressed within your " beat." And by saving 
everywhere else and using your money to enlarge 
your power to serve the people, you may become a 
statesman, such as lived in the old days, when great 
men dwelt under humble roofs, and went forth 
from narrow farms to guide the destinies of mighty 
states. And if you can be a wise philanthropist, 
and are sure that you know some good way to cure 
those social evils we all too plainly see, pray spend 
your Dollar to gain a place where you can be an 
angel of deliverance to the sorrowing, the sinful, 
the oppressed. The crown of earthly privilege is 
to occupy your own place ^ and the only wise use of 
ononcy is to l)uy that place. And then all is in your 
hands — for the wisdom to fill it, and the virtue to 
make it a centre of power aud love, no money can 
buy ; that must be gained by long, weary service, 
obedience to God, reverence for man, and devotion 
to those graces of the soul that mould the religious 
life. 

The Gold Dollar is the type of American civiliza- 
tion. As it is a metallic plate on which we may 
write the Tempter's creed or the Saviour's prayer, 
so is our country such a material opportunity a,s 
was never seen, wherewith we can do what we 



THE GOLD DOLLAR. 14:1 

will for man and Gocl. But we have not yet 
learned how to gain the Dollar, nor do we really 
know how to use it. "We run about calling to the 
nations — " Who will sell an empire ? for our 23urse 
is full, we would buy — who can offer a new pleas- 
ure, a new luxury, a new way to j)ave the road of 
common life with gold ? we have more than we 
can waste — ^who wants a new railroad? we will 
survey one to the moon — ^let us float a palace of 
gold and tapestry on every river and lake, and 
build up a fairy mart of commerce, wherein every 
man shall have a stall, and all be rich !" O foolish 
young nation ! save your money, till you learn that 
the more you spend this way the leaner your soul 
will grow, till you learn in the fires of panic and 
the collapse of credit, and the wreck of your lofty 
hopes, to spend for man. For man is the summit 
of American civilization, and for him should we 
gain ; for him use the golden talisman. Spend to 
organize a free and solid industry from sea to sea. 
Spend for the home ; spend for the school ; spend 
for a pure Gospel ; spend for true art and generous 
manners ; spend for justice, and order, and official 
integrity ; oh ! spend for freedom, the emancipa- 
tion of man from the tyrannies of the 23ast, that he 
may learn to obey the eternal laws of God. All 
virtue and skill in our outward life concentrates 



142 THE GOLD DOLLAE. 

now in learning the value of this familiar Dollar ; 
in stamping it witli tlie image and superscription 
of liberty ; in gaining it by the exercise of our ut- 
termost nobility ; in using it to buy success in our 
experiment of a Christian democracy. Always 
before our eyes shall hov(>r this shining circle, illu- 
minated with the words of Christ ; and while fol- 
lowing this gleam of the gold, a f ner radiance 
shall mingle with its light, till along the horizon 
of our country's hopes its circle shall fade into the 
golden flush of a rising dawn, and over the hills 
shall leap the new day of love and joy, and the 
Christ shall again be born in a nation's life, and 
from the i:)rivate heart and the public soxd shall 
ascend the prayer : " Our Father who art in Heav- 
en, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. 
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven." 



YI. 

THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND THE OBSERVATORY; 

OR, 

EDUCATIOiT m NEW YOEK. 

On the IStli December, 1844, was inaugurated 
ill the City of Albany the most characteristic of 
our institutions of learning — the State N^ormal 
School. Beginning with the humblest pretensions, 
II little group of twenty-nine pupils and their 
teachers, it has gradually increased to its present 
importance. A legislative appropriation in 1844 
of $10,000 a year, for five years, was its first 
impulse. In 1848, $15,000, and subsequently 
$10,000 followed as an appropriation for the pre- 
sent building, which was occupied July 30th, 1849. 
During the thirteen years of its existence, 2,887 
pupils have received educational discipline within 
its walls, at an expense of $45 a piece ; and it 
would be difficult to name the public or private 

143 



144 THE nor:mal school and obsekvatory ; 

investment of $130,000, wliich lias borne such 
fruits within our prosperous Eepublic. 

The observatory which now crowns one of our 
most conspucious heights, and overlooks an enchant- 
ing landscape while it sweeps a vast horizon, is a 
later child of the same desire to promote the inter- 
ests of sound learning. Founded in the spring of 
1853, and enriched by the successive contributions 
of the citizens of Albany and our State, it was 
inaugurated at the meeting of the American Scien- 
tific Association in this city, Aug. 28th, 1856. The 
eloquent periods of the greatest living master of 
ceremonial oratory in our language still linger in 
our ears as we recall that day ; and we may antici- 
pate the time when his glowing prophecies will be 
realized in its valuable contributions to astrono- 
mical science. 

But it is not to sound the praises of these admira- 
ble institutions, yet in their infancy, that I have 
placed their names at the head of my discourse. 
There are other and more celebrated observatories 
and l^ormal Schools than these, and the peo]3le of 
the greatest existing republic must enrich and 
enlarge all their educational establishments far 
beyond their present limits to supply their own 
wants. But situated as these institutions are, in 
the capital city of New York, and representing, as 



OR, EDUCATIOX IN NEW YORK. 145 

thej do, the two great central ideas of mental cul- 
ture, I may use them as symbolic of the complete 
intellectual development of our commonwealth. 

The l^ormal School is the corner-stone of our 
system of free instruction; and from the 11,492 
free school-houses of New York radiate those 
influences which create the newspaper, the maga- 
zine, our fugitive literature, the public library, 
the popular oratory in behalf of social and politi- 
cal interests, and the system of literary lectures 
which has done so much for the more advanced of 
our IS'orthern States. These are the agencies of 
that mental culture of the people which is the 
glory of our civilization, and the foundation of 
popular intelligence : and of this side of the educa- 
tion of New York, the Normal School is the most 
characteristic type. 

The Observatory, wherein are conducted the 
investigations of the most sublime of our natural 
sciences, is the best representative of that profound 
culture in abstract truth without which popular 
education and institutions inevitably degenerate 
to a superficial and transient existence. The refer- 
ence to fundamental principles in every depart- 
ment of intellectual life will create a valuable 
body of scientific knowledge, a broad and reliable 
professional education, a permanent national litera- 

1 



146 THE KORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSERVATORY; 

tnre; and from tliese springs among tlie highlands 
of thought will flow innumerable streams of fertil- 
izing, practical energy. To show the relations of 
these two divisions of intellectual culture, and 
vindicate the imperative necessity of their perfect 
union in the mental develoj)ment of our State, is 
the theme of the present discourse. 

I certainly may be excused for declining to 
defend the necessity of a thorough Intellectual Cul- 
ture for the whole population of E'ew York. I do 
not question that there are many persons yet living 
in our State, who would demand proof of this com- 
monplace. I could not convince the ignorant disci- 
ples of this gospel according to the dunces of their 
error; but fortunately a good Providence can be 
trusted sooner or later to bring every unlettered 
citizen of this republic into a position where he 
will at least stop boasting of his disgrace, and 
cease from any open attack upon his own best 
interests. And I have but one thing to say of any 
cultivated man or woman who openly or secretly 
resists the best culture of the people — that such a 
person is a public enemy and should be marked 
and watched as a traitor to Liberty and Humanity. 
Whether the opposition is from the conceit of a lite- 
rary class, or the fanaticism of a mediaeval relig- 
ious sect, or the baser desire to play the demagogue 



i 



oil, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 147 

at the head of a rabble ; it is equally dangerous, 
and equally to be denounced by all who believe 
in American Freedom and the Christian Re- 
ligion. 

But there is an error, more deeply seated than 
we may imagine, which requires a more respectful 
notice ; not because it is less dangerous, but is the 
result of honest misconcej)tioii of the office of men- 
tal culture itself, and entertained by thousands of 
well meaning people. 

There is doubtless a tendency in some regions 
of our most cultivated society to undervalue popu- 
lar culture ; to cut oft' from its support or the coop- 
eration w^ilh its various agencies, and to sneer at 
the superficiality that does exist in the common 
school, the press, the fugitive literature, and the 
popular oratory, rather than to labor for their 
elevation. On the otlier hand, a tendency is 
developing among the masses of the people, 
fostered too often by their present instructors, to 
undervalue the study of abstract princi23les ; to 
force all education to become what is falsely called 
^' practical ;" to break down tlie higher institutions 
of learning in favor of professional schools ; to 
smother a permanent literature in a deluge of 
journalism ; and to discourage the thinking head 
on the platform in favor of the most voluble 



IttS THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSERVATORY ; 

tongue, and bring all subjects of intellectual cul- 
ture into subjection to tlie suffrages of the peo- 
ple. 

Both these delusions will vanish before the ques- 
tion, " What is the itse of mental education f " It 
is evidently, first, to develop the individual man 
into the completeness of his humanity ; and second, 
to unfold the mind of a State in its largest and 
noblest dimensions. 

Intellectual culture has not done its work when 
it has made a scholar in any department of learn- 
ing ; for this scholar may be only half of a man, 
a mere child of impulse, void of commanding will 
or wisdom, intrusted with a casket of the jewels 
of knowledge. Until his acquisitions have become 
a part of his vital blood and bone and sinew, and 
science has borne its fruit of a wise and lofty char- 
acter, he is yet a " freshman " in the great college 
of life. Neither has a man succeeded better who 
uses knowledge only so far as it serves him for 
some material end ; and ignores the claims of a 
liberal culture as impractical. This man is as 
surely a pedant as the scholar he despises, and his 
pedantry is more degrading, shutting his soul in a 
prison of material and selfish occupations. Li- 
tellectual culture is first for the sake of manhood 
and womanhood : to unfold the divine facultv of 



OK, EDUCATION IN NEW YOKK. 149 

reason, to impart the ability of reflection and ac- 
curacy of judgment in all regions of human 
experience, to clothe man with his com23lete power, 
which may be used in the service of truth and 
righteousness. It is not to prepare a man for one 
position, to do a special work, whether in a college 
or a workshop ; these are but its incidental 
results ; rather to develop souls into the likeness 
of Eternal wisdom. 

The public function of education is not to raise 
up a literary or learned class in the State, or to 
teach the masses alone the best method of work. 
The experience of European society is not inspir- 
ing in its division into a learned fraternity and an 
ignorant populace. TVe are not so enamored of 
literature that we are willing to pay for it the price 
of political degradation. We w^ant no servile cul- 
tivated class fav/ning about the feet of despotic 
power, holding the pen under the eye of a police, 
and flying off into regions of insane abstract specu- 
lation as a relief from the barbarous tyranny that 
forbids genius to speak on the rights of man ; but 
that we must have unless we teach the whole 
people ; we have it already in those portions of 
America most nearly resembling the old world. 
Better postpone the hopes of American scholarship 
a thousand years, than sacrifice the grander hopes 



150 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OB.^ERVATORY ; 

of Republican life in our new world. But let us 
not swing off into the opposite danger of a purely 
material and superficial education ; for thus we 
check the growth of the American mind in its 
infancy, and destroy the hope of an elevated civil- 
ization. If we are to have nothing better for all 
the trouble and peril of a democracy, than cheaper 
bread, better clothes and houses, more money in 
our pockets, and the ambitious shrewdness and 
unscrupulous energy that now dominates every- 
where in our society, we have made a failure. 
And wdioever discourages the most generous and 
profound culture, is helping to fix us in this dis- 
graceful attitude before mankind. Eut we endure 
much that now offends us in the ardent hope that 
through our singular mixture of population and 
varied public and private experience, aided by the 
widest mental discipline, a nevv- and grander order 
of mind is slovrly growing up in our State and 
country ; a mind in whicJi ultimately the energy 
that now surveys railroads, and ploughs over ter- 
ritories, will mount to higher realms of spiritual 
activity and mightily advance the cause of man's 
eternal destiny. Thus the second use of intellec- 
tual culture, as a whole, is to serve this highest 
interest of our State in the training of an American 
character founded on the everlasting lav/ of love 



OK, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 151 

as translated in our great national declaration of 
Imman rights. 

Therefore let there be no jealousy between 
the scholars and the j)eople. Each can live in 
i^ew York only by the aid of the other. The most 
generous popular cultivation should lead men to 
perceive the infinite value of these central prin- 
cipals that lie at the foundations of the soul and 
life upon earth; the most profound scholarship 
should count the spiritual elevation of a Eepublic 
a work as far transcending any achievment in 
special science as man transcends the planet he in- 
habits. The formal School and the Observatory 
are twin symbols of a culture that, laying its vast 
foundations in the education of every soul in the 
State, shall rise by gradual ascents to those sublime 
heights of abstract truth gilded by the eternal 
morning of an omnipresent love. 

The ITormal School is the corner-stone of the 
popular mental culture of our State. For the 
teacher is the soul of that free school where the 
vast majority of our people will learn the rudiments 
of knowledge. According to the quality of the 
31,503 instructors who direct the 1,214,771 child- 
ren of JSTew York in the paths of learning, will be 
the future tastes of those children in intellectual 
pursuits. Whether they read the best or the worst 



152 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSERVATORY; 

of our public journals ; wlietlier they abide in the 
valleys of literature or strain up its invigorating 
heights; whether wisdom or folly in the popular 
assembly, and the high places of influence shall 
sway their opinions, is due chiefly to their first 
years of training in the school-room. 

And without any special censure of these 31,000 
teachers who now consent to lay the mental founda- 
tions of our Eepublic for the paltry compensation 
of less than $200 per year, we may boldly declare 
that while less than one-fifth of them receive any 
preliminary training in any preparatory institu- 
tions, inefiiciency and failure must be the rule as 
often as the exception in this sacred sphere of 
effort. We venture to say that the people would 
complain if a shoal of preachers, doctors and law- 
yers were let loose on the State with no prepara- 
tion for their important vocations. Yet none of 
these professional characters claim a tithe of the 
opportunity of permanent public influence possess- 
ed by the teacher in the free school ; and, strange 
to declare, we commit the intellectual training of 
the whole coming generation to transient, poorly- 
paid and sustained agents, not one in five of whom 
pretends to have received any training for the most 
honorable office in the Commonwealth. While, 
therefore, we fully appreciate the fidelity of those 



OKj EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 153 

who are laboring at the task of elevating the 
teachers in the one State JSTormal School, in the 
Teachers' Institutes, and in the academical depart- 
ments, which out of onr metropolis are the only 
establishments for such a work, we insist that the 
work of creating a profession of cornjpetent and jper- 
manent common school teachers, whose services shall 
comj^el an adequate reioard, is only hegun. This re- 
form lies at the basis of all others in our complex 
and somewhat unwieldy school system. Let every 
friend of the people sound the cry from Xew York 
to IS^iagara : "More Normal Schools / more training 
for the teachers /" The cry of political parties is 
ever for economy. Let our public servants retrench 
in that enormous waste of money, and mind, and 
civilization which attends a body of unprepared 
teachers of the young ; and inaugurate decided 
measures for enlarging and improving our establish- 
ments for the discipline of public instructors, and 
whatever politicians may say, the people will finally 
pronounce that they have seized the true principle 
of economy. . Let the people demand and pay for 
the best opportunities of modern culture for these 
31,000 sovereigns who now rule the millions of 
youth that are to rule the Commonwealth. 

We have spoken of the Free School as that in 
which the vast majority of our people are to be 

1* 



154: THE NOEMAL SCHOOL AND OBSERVATORY ; 

educated. Already the number of cliildren in it, 
compared witli private schools, is as thirty to one, 
and the disproportion is yearly increasing. Indeed, 
it is doubtful whether the private schools of ISTew 
York, except in occasional exceptions, are equal to 
our best public establishments, while the exj)ense 
of education is fearfully greater. I am assured by 
competent authority that in a certain town in our 
State, containing 3,000 children, as much money is 
paid for the instruction of 240 youth in private 
schools as the entire expense for the remainder in 
good public institutions. 

Out of this state of society I suppose the people 
expect a Democracy! But the extravagance in 
money is a small part of the evil. Of course, pri- 
vate special instruction will always be a necessity 
in a cultivated community ; but to count u]3on any 
form of select schools to do the Vv^ork of educating 
a State like 'New York is a folly that sensible men 
should outgrow. The experience of Prussia and 
ISTew England are conclusive that the people can 
be best educated in public institutions, and the 
great results both in popular intelligence and ele- 
vated scholarship attained in these communities 
prove the efficacy of the system. It is almost im- 
possible to find a Prussian citizen unable to read 
and write ; and New England is fast approaching 



OK, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 155 

this condition ; wliile the high culture and scholar- 
ship of these countries lead the literature of Ger- 
many and America. England, with no general 
system of free public instruction, is half untaught. 
Even New York, with her conflicting system, has 
150,000 adult citizens unable to write. It may not 
appear to those whose social or sectarian prejudices 
make them look coldly on our noble system of 
public instruction, that they are unconsciously the 
allies of the worst barbarism in the State ; that 
while they hesitate to pay their money and elevate 
their free schools to the front rank of merit, thou- 
sands of youth are joining the armies of the igno- 
rant and swelling the vandal horde that already 
howls and thunders at the gates of our new civiliz- 
ation. If the children of a Webster or an Everett 
or of the great scholars of Germany can be taught 
as they have been in the public school, cannot we 
in 'New York make ours the suitable place for the 
culture of the whole people ? I must believe that 
the most dangerous form of sectarianism is that 
which would break down this great interest, and 
commit whole regions of our society to the culture 
of a Catholic or Protestant priesthood. I count no 
social Aristocracy so odious as that which, out of 
contempt for the children of the people, withdraws 
money, influence and patronage from the great 



156 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSERVATORY; 

nursery of the State, and immures a select few in 
the walls of a narrow culture which must be a com- 
plete disqualification for any broad life. 

The public school, organized by our best wis- 
dom, supported by our wealth, and officered by a 
thoroughly trained corps of public servants, would 
be an influence as far above any form of select in- 
struction, as the heart of a great people beats 
higher than the pulse of a clique or a corporation. 
Let our Capital City take her own youth in hand ; 
call in the 2,000 vagrant children that roam her 
streets ; cover her hills with school-houses after the 
pattern of the last ample structure ; offer a seat 
therein to every child ; from her abundant means se- 
cure the ablest teachers in the State ; without delay 
establish a free school for girls and boys ; and lend 
the due proportion of her vaunted political influence 
to the elevation of the whole people ; or she may yet 
encounter the reproach of spending thousands for 
the select culture of the few, while she is training 
up an army of savages by the teachers of the 
street. 

JSText in importance to the common school in our 
popular culture, is the Press, as organized in the 
newspaper, magazine and fugitive literature. It 
would probably surprise any man to learn the ex- 
tent to which the literary wants of our population 



OR, KDUCATION IN NKW YORK. 157 

are supplied from this source. The State census of 
1855 reports 559 newspapers and 112 periodicals, 
whose circulation is: dailj, 312,783; tri-weeklj, 
8,100; semi-weeklj, 40,387; weekly, 1,291,310; 
semi-monthly, 261,600 ; monthly, 1,287,650 ; quar- 
terly, 31,950; semi-annual, 11,000; annual, 96,950. 
Doubtless a considerable proportion of this matter 
circulates outside of the State, and is a part of the 
national influence of our popular culture; but 
enough remains in the State to excite the amaze- 
ment of any uninformed observer. And when we 
add to this the vast number of books, written in 
essentially the same style, we must say that our 
wants for popular reading are most bountifully 
supplied. 

It is one of the cheapest ways of affecting su- 
perior culture to sneer at this whole mass of pop- 
ular literature ; but it is a wiser thing to examine 
the phenomenon and report on its significance. 
This rage for transient reading proves, not that the 
taste of the cultivated has declined, but that the 
feojple are learning to read. Never were so many 
persons reading anything hefore as now in a few 
of the States of the Union. Whole classes now 
read that once were wholly ignorant. Of course, 
when a State begins its journey in the Avorld of 
literature, it takes the easiest path ; reads the news 



158 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSERVATORY; 

of the day ; is interested chiefly in pithy and 
Bketchy methods of conveying information ; pre- 
fers monthly picture-books illustrated with read- 
ing to permanent works of genius ; and if it 
enters the domain of books, craves those which 
have grown out of the newspaper and magazine, 
and demand only an ordinary comprehension for 
enjoyment. Thus we should rather rejoice that so 
many have began to read in New York, than turn 
v/ith disgust from much they do read. 

That this phenomenon of journalism in its pre- 
sent form is to be permanent, we have no belief. 
It is a sort of railroad to carry our people over 
from ignorance to a love for good literature, and is 
doing the work with as few accidents as could be 
expected. If a majority of the journals are parti- 
san advocates, and feed the people with much that 
degrades their taste and embitters their spirit, it 
is also true that there is a minority which furnish 
writing of a respectable and often of a high degree 
of merit, conducted by editors of high attainments 
and elevated principles. The newspaper is the re- 
presentative, not the leader, of the people. Every 
journal represents its public, and cannot long 
abide above its level. K there are papers that 
appear to be edited by Satan, it is because a class 
of the people is on good terms with that sulphur- 



OR, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 159 

0118 functionary. If some of our best journals teem 
with the lowest details of crime and folly, it is be- 
cause there are so many respectable people who 
like to sit in theii' arm-chair in the family, and 
look through this popular telescope down into the 
lowest hells of creation. If the political and theo- 
logical " organs " are yet grossly partisan, and live 
on misrepresentation and suppression, it is because 
the majority of the people yet postpone the labor 
of thinking, for the more congenial occupation of 
training under leaders, and mustering upon plat- 
forms. But there is much that is good in all our 
journals. The best give us every day as good 
essays as were written by the wdts of Queen 
Anne's time, for the delectation of the scholars ; and 
altogether our popular writing is purer and more 
elevating than the whole body of English litera- 
ture in some of its most illustrious periods. The 
duty of the cultivated and religious community is 
to urge selection, to hold this press to a stern litera- 
ry and moral criticism, and demand the best the 
people can bear. A thousand editors will accept 
the chairs of those who now write when called to 
do higher work. Let good men rally about the best 
journals and periodicals, and unite to overwhelm 
the base and mean by a persistent letting alone of 
their foul wares. 



160 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSEEVATORl' 



Especially sliould we sustain the efforts making 
to develop a liigli-toned and free j^eriodical wor- 
thy of the best state of American civilization. 
The word has already gone forth that no magazine 
shall live which does not go down into the dust 
before our national bigotry and despotism. There 
may be a popular censorship) more destructive 
than an Austrian police of literature, and the 
efforts to crush out the best utterances of genius 
should be met by the stern rebuke of every man 
who desires to see literature a power in our 
Democracy, rather than the dancing attendant on 
a ruling class, or a dominant creed. 

It is not clearly understood that this great out- 
burst of popular writing in journals, magazines 
and fugitive books is the hirth of American 
literature. Our national literature is not to be 
the reproduction of any foreign culture. It will 
not come from the brains of pedants or criti- 
cal students of the past ; but will spring out of 
the souls of men and women that are filled with 
the great American idea, insj^ired by her magnifi- 
cent opportunities and solemnized by her wavering 
destiny. Already scattered through these fugitive 
leaves are not a few ominous words that sound the 
key note to the chorus of the future. Let us not 
complain too much of the mania for scribbling that 



OR, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 161 

infests all classes of our youth. Some of these 
boys and girls will catch a glimj)se of our Ameri- 
can realities and inscribe them in enduring lines. 
And with a thorough popular education and the 
unbounded facilities for reading, travel and social 
intercourse, added to the stimulant of our public 
life, many a scribbler will be trained in journalism 
for the loftier flights of authorship. 

The help of public libraries is now greatly 
needed. Every town in !N^ew York needs a copi- 
ous free library of good literature, where its youth 
can find a counter-influence to the fluctuating 
waves of journalism. "With such aids to receive 
the child from the school-room, we may look for a 
soil of popular intelligence that shall bear fruits 
in literature and life worthy our best hopes. 

These agencies of popular culture find their com- 
pletion in our popular oratory. The stump to 
which our servants must all descend from their 
official chairs, and face their masters ; the j)latform 
where the special reformer thunders out his indig- 
nation, sure of stirring some warm hearts to sym- 
pathy ; and the desk where the " Lions " duly 
appear and shake their manes and roar to the 
delectation or disgust of the literary societies, are 
doubtless not inferior to any mental influence save 
the teachers. Books and journals will never 



162 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSERVATORY ; 

extinguish man ; Oratory is still the highest of 
human arts, and the most potent engine of human 
persuasion. Our people are greatly taught by this 
public speaking ; and it only needs a more com- 
plete organization and a larger freedom to insure 
the grandest results. Of course, the same condi- 
tions accompany this as all forms of culture. In 
many localities a noisy humbug will talk to the 
people while a wise man cannot be heard ; but the 
test of a true speaker is to wait and grow by the con- 
tact with the few until the people, tired of their 
quacks, come to him for relief. And then the 
same car that carries Prof. Windbags will convey 
the real orator to stir up a people in one hour so 
that henceforth they never can live as they have 
existed. The studious eifort now making in many 
quarters to keep the best of our public orators 
from the platform, and compel the people to hear 
second rate talk, will return to plague its inventors, 
and only confirm the people in the resolution to 
hear all sides on the great questions of our civi- 
lization through their acknowledged represen- 
tatives. 

America is destined to be the home of such elo- 
quence as never yet has shaken the nations. 
Great orators • are made by great occasions and 
great listening; and the American orator, whose 



OR, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 163 

every thrilling period, and fervent thought, is 
flashed along the wires through the area of mighty 
States, whose themes range around the highest 
earthly interests of man amid the strange circum- 
stances of a new existence, is exalted to an oppor- 
tunity equal to the noblest human aspiration. Let 
the people listen rightly and their souls will not be 
unvisited by the prophecies and visions of truth 
which the men of former days desired in vain. 

The best results of these combined agencies 
for popular cultivation, will be the production of a 
rich, deep soil of general intelligence ; the best 
nursery of genius. Great minds are largely 
modified by the spirit of an age, birth-place, and 
social influence. A man of genius, born and train- 
ed amid a cultivated class, is quite another being 
from the offspring of a great and intelligent people. 
First class men oftenest have arisen outside the 
narrow circles of social caste or special scholar- 
ship ; and so far from universal education dwarfing 
extraordinary talent, it will only form a deeper 
and stronger mould in which loftier trees may 
strike a firmer root. In proportion as the average 
of culture rises, v/ill the variety and number of 
specially gifted souls increase. The true sy tern of 
Education in ISTew York is one which, founded on 
the broadest basis of popular instruction, shall 



164 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSKRVATORT ; 

gradually rise througli the Free High School to 
professional Seminaries, and the best University 
privileges of the time. Thus will the State be in a 
condition to arrest every man and woman of ex- 
traordinary promise, and proifer such encourage- 
ment as would develop all the genius of the 
commonwealth in the largest style. When we 
consider what a waste of talent is incurred by our 
present condition of affairs; how many young 
women of genius are hindered from their proper 
opportunities; and what a perversion of shining 
abilities there is into unsuitable employments, we 
must accuse our republic of a criminal prodigality 
in her best treasure. If we have done so much in 
spite of our lack of advantages, what could not be 
done by organization of all the appliances of the 
highest culture, and their union with the system of 
popular Education. 

The Observatory is the type of that severe study 
of abstract principles, which is the final test of hu- 
man culture ; for we must never forget that facts 
and knowledge are only valuable to men as tliey 
are brought into relation to the everlasting ideas 
and laws on which life itself reposes. There is 
great danger that our youth will lose themselves 
in this drifting ocean of popular education, and 
fall into that most deplorable of mental states, the 



OK, EDUCATION IN NKW YOKK. 165 

sport of every new theory and the victim of to- 
day's excitement. More than ever before, it is 
now important that we shonld have some deeply 
grounded ideas of existence — some immovable 
principle of character, and guide our conduct by 
an unchangeable law of public and private right ; 
but such principals cannot be borrowed — cannot 
be shot into men from the stump, or crammed 
into the telegraphic column of the newspaper; 
they are the fruit of self-knowledge, toil, and 
thought ; and unless the youthful mind is trained 
to the severe investigation of ideas in science 
and society, it is not probable that the task will 
be learned, amid the cares and excitement of 
middle-age. Hence the very abundance of our 
popular privileges will be our worst enemy, un- 
less we knit up into the system the most complete 
opportunities for the profoundest study, and the 
wisest range through the loftier fields of intel- 
lectual enterprise. 

The University is the place where our chosen 
youth are to be instructed in the investigation of 
ideas and principles, and shown the extent and 
grandeur of the realms of human knowledge ; 
while the Professional School receives those who 
require special training in each department of 
life; although all teaching in the Common School 



166 THE NOKMAL SCHOOL AND OESEKVATOKY ; 

should aim at a discipline of the mind in reflection 
and the search for the central laws of thought. 

That our present machinery for developing the 
higher intelligence of this State is adequate, we 
suppose no well instructed man will assert. While 
'New York was passing t'i;-ongh its transition from 
a wilderness to the world's first republic, it was 
necessary to plant an academy or college in every 
accessible place, and thus carry the best education 
that could be procured to the people. But ISTew 
York, seamed with railroads, with her 3,500,000 
souls virtually a family, will not long be content 
with this tem|)orary arrangement. She has now 
10 colleges, with 100 professors and 1,000 students; 
210 academies, with S50 teachers and 23,000 schol- 
ars, conducted at an expense of more than §2,500,- 
000 ; while her citizens proclaim that there is no 
university or school of commanding rank. Is it not 
time that Leo^islatures should cease from this dis- 
persion of the means of high culture over such a 
wide area, and look for its concentration in some 
first class University worthy of this great State? 
The Free High School, properly developed, would 
do the work of a majority of our academies better 
and on a larger scale ; while the best academical in- 
stitutions might be elevated to preparatory schools 
for the ITniversitv. Three colleo'es are better than 



OK, KDITCATION IN NEW YOEK. 167 

ten ; a concentration of Professional Schools wonld 
raise the character and usefulness of special cul- 
ture ; and the establishment of Seminaries for 
agricultural and mechanical training of various 
kinds, would comj)lete the circle. Then what is 
to prevent a great University, enriched bj the 
wealth and fostered by the protection of the State, 
where every young man and w^oman of extraordi- 
nary promise could be invited by the Common- 
wealth, and assisted in the enjoyment of the best 
advantages of modern culture ? Contraction in 
the number of our higher Seminraies ; larger op- 
portunities in all, and the admission of woman to 
equal privileges with man; with a provision for 
free culture in the highest no less than the lowest 
departments of thought, is the direction in which 
we must move, or see our choicest youth drawm .to 
other States to seek the generous training denied 
them in our own. 

Who can contemplate the result of such reforms 
on the whole ^professional class ? To say nothing 
of the advantage from elevating agricultural, 
domestic and mechanical pursuits, to the rank of 
professions, the whole body of men introduced to 
the pulpit, the bar, the legislative halls, medical 
science and editorship, would become more able 
and efficieui. We shall be very blind if we do 



168 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSERVATORY ; 

not perceive that siicli a population as our's needs 
every year more careful handling — demands wiser 
leaders in every region of public activity. Many 
evils that now afflict the American church, state 
and society, would vanish, were a new and higher 
class of men to aj^pear and occupy the chief posi- 
tions. Such youth we have, and only need our 
best training to prepare them for the inspiring du- 
ties of our future. And how would our native lite- 
rature and art advance, could every youth of 
genius look confidently to the State for a helping 
hand at every stej), from the alphabet to the high- 
est opportunities of the age. What a field for the 
development of great genius is here ; our superb 
and varied scenery ; our growing vigor and influ- 
ence ; never were richer materials oflTered to the 
author and the artist. Let the Commonwealth 
welcome her gifted children to the w^hole circle of 
modern high culture, and her presses will groan 
with boohs that the nation will read and her gal- 
leries shine with the idealizations of her nature 
and her civilization. 

From such a blending of interests the scholar 
would become the elder brother of the people, and 
from the heights of science would flow down per- 
petual blessings of practical power to the plains, 
even as the rivers that water tlie valleys, rise from 



OR, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 169 

silent far off mountain springs. Then would ap- 
pear an ever-gaining intercourse between all 
classes of society ; tlie vulgarity of ignorance 
would disappear, and the cultivated mind, no long- 
er driven within a narrow circle, would range like 
a beneficent teacher through all the regions of our 
population. Then would the present monotony of 
our social affairs give place to a charming variety, 
since well educated men and women will always 
make life more varied and complex, and break 
down barriers founded on mere length of purse 
and pride of family or race. Then would the pre- 
sent jealousy between city and country disappear; 
for the barbarism of the city, and the vandalism 
of the country, which now lie at the foundation of 
such contentions, would vanish, and sensible j)eople 
would soon perceive that between the field and 
the pavement there is no real opposition. And 
the present desolating contentions of partisan poli- 
tics would depart with the extinction of the 
hordes of ignorant voters, who are now the body- 
guard of artful demagogues; and the State, no 
longer torn by internal feuds on secondary affairs, 
would move to her place as the leader of Freedom 
in National Affairs. 

Doubtless the end of this scheme of culture 
would be the development of a peculiar civiliza- 



170 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSEKVATOET ; 

tion, founded on the genius of our peoj)le. Tlie 
mind of ]^ew York is superior to that of any other 
American State, in breadth of view, the capacity 
for great public undertakings, executive ability, 
and powerful enthusiasm for the right. If Xew 
England is privileged to be the home of ideas, the 
nursery of the most accurate culture and the most 
fastidious refinement, it is equally the fact, that her 
ideas must be reorganized, adjusted and adminis- 
tered in ^N'ew York, before they can operate on a 
scale as large as the whole of America. By our ' 
mixture of races, we can comprehend the wants 
of all. By our commanding position, we can re- 
ceive the best the old world has to give, and 
mould it for the common wants of the new. Om- 
cosmoj^olitan style of society and manners has 
repeated itself as far as the Pacific ; our political 
and industrial energy concentrated in our great 
cities, is felt through the entire Union of States. 
"Would to Heaven v/e could cease our proverbial 
boasting of opportunities we so shamefully abuse ; 
would that, filled with a profound gratitude for our 
privileges and a solemn sense of our responsibility 
for our administration thereof, we could first lay 
deep and strong the foundation of permanent 
greatness and indestructible liberty in the educa- 
tion of every citizen. Then, instead of strewing 



OR, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 171 

the wilderness of the tropics with the bones of our 
yonng men, slain in the piratical conquest of sav- 
age lands, we might leave behind ns institutions 
of learning and wisdom, which, in every genera- 
tion, would send forth new armies of millions of 
intelligent freemen, who, in every part of the 
earth, would testify against the wrong, and mighti- 
ly uphold the right. 



YII. 

PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

In a former discourse we have unfolded the true 
idea of mental culture for tlie citizens of the 
Empire State. But we are aware that when this 
is attained we encounter an ancient and unrecon- 
ciled quarrel between the man of letters and the 
man of action. The practical genius of our great 
commonwealth is always jealous of the interfe- 
rence of the scholastic mind in affairs. It would 
drive the scholar and professional man off into a 
narrow circle of mental operations and claim the 
whole field of actual life for itself. As a conse- 
quence, the scholar is forced to imderrate practical 
efficiency and is confirmed in his own isolation from 
society. The great end of all human culture is yet 
imperfectly understood, even by those who claim 
to be cultivated. As a completion to our review 
of the education of the people of New York, let 
us state the true object of all developments of the 

178 



174 PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

mind ; and as truth is often enforced by contrast, 
we may speak of that false culture whose result is 
seen in an all-prevailing pedantry, and set it over 
against that true education whose finest attainment 
is the acquisition of Power. 

We shall be greatly mistaken if we suppose that 
what often goes by the name of "Culture" in 
Society develops spiritual Power. Indeed the 
well nigh universal result of culture in all depart- 
ments of American life is pedantry. Pedantry 
and power are the antagonistic ends of two ideas of 
education. To the vast majority of men, culture 
means the imposition of knowledge and arbitrary 
rules from without, — an exercise chiefiy taxing the 
memory, leaving the man unaffected. The culti- 
vated man, according to this idea, is he whose 
memory is crowded with the results of other men's 
thoughts, whose life is spent in recollecting what 
he has learned, and squaring his opinions and con- 
duct to such laws as may find their way to this 
storeliouse of the mind. The deep places of his 
nature are undisturbed ; his reason, affections, 
imagination, will have never been roused, fired, 
concentrated in any crisis of original thought, but 
are cold spectators of mental pictures thrown upon 
the walls of the soul by the camera obscura of 
memory. This kind of culture makes pedants, or 



PEDANTRY AND POWER. l75 

men in whom life waits npon knowledge, not men 
in whom knowledge is fused into life. 

We shall greatly mistake if we suppose the 
pedant is found only in the study. The literary 
pedant, the little man tottering under the crushing 
weight of his own memory, has been so often held 
up to ridicule, that it may be supposed his failing 
is the peculiar infirmity of the literary class. !N'ot so ! 
Society is crowded with pedants — the a-pt scholars 
of a system of education that would change men by 
dressing them in certain garments of conventional 
law and miscellaneous knowledo^e. Behold the 
merchant pedant, who has toiled himself into gray 
hairs and chronic restlessness, and never learned 
the alphabet of his trade ; that a merchant is a 
man applying the eternal laws of nature and 
justice to practical affairs, not a man driven in a 
harness, whose reins are clutched in the unfeeling 
gripe of a false popular system of business. 
Behold the agricultural pedant, who spends fifty 
years trying to adjust the earth to the few notions 
of farming he has inherited from his ancestors or 
gathered from his neighbors. Have you not seen 
the female social pedant, whose idea of woman 
is a creature made to keep house and rear children 
like everybody else, be clothed upon as the Juno 
nods from the sacred mount of fashion whence 



176 PEDANTEY AND POWEK. 

descends the apparel of the " angels upon earth," 
to revolve in the monotonous treadmill which 
somebody calls good society, and pilot her soul 
within the breakers whereon she is assured all who 
venture outside the reigning conventionalism are 
fatally wrecked ? I think I have seen the pedant 
of politics whose platform is " man for constitu- 
tion," not " the constitution for man." 

Practical people are fond of ascribing all pedan- 
try to the men of letters — the preachers, the law- 
yers, the doctors, the scholars. We accept their 
most severe criticism, and only hope grace will be 
given us to see that man is the true centre of all 
professional life ; but we cannot be ignorant that 
pedantry is the curse of common life and most des- 
tructive thereto. Whatever sinks the man into an 
appendage to the memory and crowds the mind 
with knowledge without arousing the soul, is false 
culture and ends in folly. How has the sacred 
office of instruction suffered at the hands of such 
men and women, schoolmasters and schoolmis- 
tresses who shout forevermore to their scholars 
from behind a barricade of words, disjointed facts, 
superficial theories, and conventional rules ; whose 
souls never touch the soul they affect to teach ; who 
know not what it is to stand by human nature and 
invoke its sublime energies to harmonious power. 



PEDANTRY AND POWER. 177 

There is another style of culture which arouses 
the nature, bj the contact of life and the stimu- 
lant of science, and when the faculties are actually 
awakened and trained, leads the mind up to the 
avenues of knowledge, and points along these 
grand vistas the way to Spiritual Power. " Strait 
is the gate and narrow is the way " of this high cul- 
ture, "and few there be that find it." Few indeed 
are they in any walk of life who have gained posses- 
sion of their own powers, assimilated their know- 
ledge and experience into the blood of life, who 
grow in human excellence as the years bear them 
on ; who placed before a new subject of thought or 
thrown into a new complication of afi*airs, bring to 
the solution of their present problem a fresh origi- 
nal Spiritual Power. These souls are the rulers of 
life, the only " cultivated." It has been a tradi- 
tion of the past, that these men must always remain 
a class ; but we are bound to show that this is the 
natural training to which every soul has a right. 

The constituents of Spiritual Power are Freedom, 
Earnestness and Purity. 

It is a criminal mockery to demand Spiritual 
Power where Freedom is denied. Freedom is the 
unlimited privilege of searching for truth, and 
making its unrestricted application in life. Ca- 
price is not freedom ; willfulness is not freedom ; 

8* 



178 PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

incontinence of body or soul is not freedom ; 
tliese are the slavery of the higher to the lower 
faculties of roan. Only through reverence for the 
true, and love for the good, does the soul rise into 
an ever- widening universe of thought and life, and 
under the lead of such an inspiration, no man can 
be safely hindered in his journey to Spiritual 
Power. For there is no faculty in man which 
may not rightly claim its legitimate exercise. Who 
shall forbid the ocean of human affection, whose 
waves conceal the awful boundary line between 
the soul and its Maker, to ebb and flow responsive 
to divine attraction in God and Man ? What pre- 
tentious philosophy will dare to chain reason with- 
in the bounds of a foregone conclusion, and thus 
insult Omniscience through its only delegete on 
earth ? Is any conventional notion of morality so 
valuable, that we can afford to sacrifice the imagi- 
nation, whereby we behold and reproduce the eter- 
nal beauty on its altar ? Is it not a shameful thing 
that man claims the absolute power over his fellow- 
man, and scorns the will, which is our most human 
possession? And if all our hopes of success in 
this state of being depend on the welfare of the 
temple in which our spirit dwells, is it not a crime 
to degrade the body and vilify nature, either by a 
narrow asceticism or a beastly sensuality ? 



PEDANTRY AND POWER. 179 

And if all Imman faculties may rightfully claim 
Freedom, who will presume to fence off any por- 
tion of the field of human knowledge and life, and 
forbid the entrance of man therein? who knows 
what subjects are beyond the reach of human 
thought ? who has surveyed the universe, that he 
should draw a chart of the coast along which man 
must inevitably sail ? Away with this pedantry ! 
Far more reverent is the most daring explorer of 
God's spiritual creation, than he who assumes to 
fix the limits of the soul at the point where he be- 
came tired and fell asleep. Limits to human know- 
ledge there may or may not be, but no man yet 
knows where the adamantine hills cut off the hori- 
zon. Doubtless Freedom is perilous, but the peril 
is not of our creation ; it is the peril of our nature, 
from which there is no escape, least of all through 
slavery. It is a very perilous thing to be a man, 
but we have been created men, and what shall we 
do with ourselves ? We cannot become trees or 
clods, or irrational beings ; we can spoil our man- 
hood by throwing away the Freedom which is its 
glory and peril, or we can gird ourselves to the 
eternal work of vindicating ourselves. "Weakness 
lies in the one path, the other path is the highway 
to spiritual power. 

And who will dare to be at once a traitor to 



180 PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

human nature, and liis native land, and withhold 
Freedom from the American youth? Do you 
point to the follies and crimes of Young America 
as the fruit of Freedom ? This bad hoy is the fruit 
of Despotism ; his scandal is the reaction against 
the tyrannical social shams that have come over 
the water, and yet poison our Republican Society 
No American generation has yet been reared in- 
true independence; what wonder that those who 
have not been awakened to the glories of Spiritual 
Freedom should mistake license for liberty. The 
American young man and woman are compelled 
to go forth upon a new Continent, and organize a 
new State, Church, School, Household, Art, Busi- 
ness — for all these things spoil in a voyage over 
the ocean. There are many fine things of this sort 
abroad ; grand results of the whole past of the 
Eastern Continent ; and the admiring traveller 
longs to put them aboard the first steamer for home 
use ; but somehow he cannot keep England, France, 
and Germany healthy, during a fortnight's voyage, 
and these majestic institutions issue from their 
state rooms in JSTew York and Boston, the sickly 
shadow of what charms the conservative American 
abroad. 'No, we must make America out of the 
world's whole past, and the whole European pre- 
sent, plus ourselves, and if this latter quantity be 



PEDANTRY AND POWER. 181 

false, where is America to come from ? How can 
we know what is good in the world's past, what is 
valuable in Europe's j)resent ; how to adopt, how 
to combine, how to create, how to organize the 
life of a continent unless we are free ? And free 
men and women are not extemporized on 4:th July 
or election days, but are formed by a free culture 
— a culture that, beginning with trust in our nature, 
unfolds all human powers, throws ojDen all fields of 
thought, leads the soul to the heights that overlook 
the vast areas of obligation, and sends it forth to 
become a citizen and a man in the might of Spirit- 
ual Power. 

Another element in Spiritual Power is Earnest- 
ness. I use this term to indicate the whole group 
of qualities that form the habit of efiicient labor. 
Thousands of well meaning people read books, as- 
sociate with learned men, take degrees in literary 
institutions, or mingle in stirring scenes of life, with- 
out forming the idea of that habitual labor which 
is the working power of genius, and the assurance 
of success. To this Earnestness belongs a perpet- 
ual Industry which rejects every plea for laziness, 
however wreathed in pleasant fancies or disguised 
in the pretence of duty, that toils on unobserved, 
and rests only while energy may accumulate. And 
along with this goes Prudence, jealous of wasted 



182 PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

efforts, with clear eyes watching for opportunities 
to accomplish, difficult things in the most decisive 
way, guarding the thoughts, lips, and life, not to 
shirk responsibility, but to meet it in the most un- 
comj^romising style ; a j)Ower whose absence brings 
confusion and defeat upon the most generous mind. 
And to this we must add Courage, without which 
Earnestness dwindles to a nervous irritability of the 
conscience on the side of truth ; Courage, that fears 
not to encounter the eye of a foe, to differ from a 
friend, to face labor, to cut the meshes of skepticism, 
to take arms against whatever lurking selfishness 
would unman the sjoirit. 

Its decisive moments are unknown to the world, 
for the things that really scare men are spectres 
seen by them alone. Beside these we must gain 
j)ersistence, the power of doing things again and 
again, doing our best whether anybody is or is not 
looking on ; for somebody knows of every noble 
w^ord or deed ; that enlists for life, uses failure for 
a school-master, despises any success that claims 
to be a finality, and has pressed on out of sight while 
men are shouting their approbation or displeasure. 
And what will all this come to without j)atience ; 
the calm, forgiving, relentless waiting for the re- 
sult, which keeps the true man firm when his com- 
panions fall into discouragement, that sees the end 



PEDAJSTTRY AND POWER. 183 

in vision and toils a whole life towards it. In 
these and similar virtnes resides that quality of the 
soul which, under the name of earnestness, chains 
observers, wins men, overcomes obstacles and 
culminates in power. 

"We shall confess the necessity of this quality 
when we remember that spiritual j)ov>'er is not an 
instantaneous, natural endowment or an inherit- 
ance, but something into which a faithful man 
grows. N^o great soul could ever "tell its ex- 
perience." The autobiographies of great lives sur- 
prise us by their meagre outlines ; they relate how 
this admirable person got up in the morning and 
drank his tea, chatted with his neighbors, went to 
his study, his work, or his fighting, resting after 
dinner, saw company and went to sleep — in short, 
lived outwardly almost as every dunce has lived 
since Adam. "Where is the history of the man's 
power? Ah, that is what he cannot write, what 
he knows less about than we suppose, what he 
sometimes doubts himself. All he or anybody 
knows is, that moved by the impulse, willing and 
faithful to conscience, he pushes on, his earnestness 
like a slow fire burning its way through whatever 
brushwood or rock obstructs his path. Pie does 
not think he has attained, but is dimly conscious 
of a grovring vigor and consistency of being. 



184: PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

And now and then, lifted on the spring-tide of his 
own power, he is borne into new regions of hope, 
and feels along his nerves the sublime thrills of an 
incomprehensible energy, beholds new worlds to 
conquer, and resolves like an archangel. This is 
his hour of vision, when like the wanderer among 
interminable mountains, he comes out upon a new 
summit, and beholds far below the former peak of 
his ambition and throws his gaze with eager long- 
ing to the blue spectral heights that haunt the hori- 
zon line. "Well it is for us that we cannot know 
the mysterious growth of spiritual power ; better 
than such knowledge is the earnestness that drives 
us towards it with motion as steady and fatal as 
the march of the systems, or the swing of the 
sea. 

Let me urge this complete earnestness uj^on the 
young who hear me. Do not mistake for it the 
mental neuralgia that afflicts so many American 
youth. An American is but a man, no law of 
life has been suspended for his sake, and any out- 
rage of the virtues that make up true earnestness 
will bring him into the same trouble that besets 
all transgressors. Kashness, imprudence, caprice, 
foolhardy and heated action, thinking like chain 
lightning and doing like the thunderbolt, may be 
fine fun for a while, but such play turns out the 



PEDANTRY AND POWER. 185 

dearest kind of work that must be done over again. 
" A fast man " is one thing, an earnest man quite 
another. Jehu the son of Jonathan drives furious- 
ly in the year 1858, as old Jehu drove in Bible 
days. He yokes the unwhipped horses of specu- 
lation and over-trading to his chariot of business 
and vanishes in a cloud of dust, and to-morrcv"- 
is hauled out of the ditch from beneath the ruins 
of his equipage by some poor patient donkey that 
has been plodding on far behind. Jehu drives 
fast in domestic affairs ; up goes the brown stone 
front, in and out the doors flash Mrs. Jehu 
and the little Jehus, resplendent in diamonds 
and taffeta ; what a crowd mobs his saloon on re- 
ception nights ! Alas ! one silent gentleman rings 
the bell, calls Jehu aside, and, lo ! the sheriff has 
dissolved the illusion, and old Slow jogs up to the 
auction and buys out the concern at a ruinous dis- 
count. How Jehu cracks his whip in the Senate. 
Onward and upward, new worlds to conquer; a 
fig for justice, hurra for success; man and God 
stand aside ! Alas, the poor creature is only rim- 
ning himself blind and mad, and will soon lie 
breathless, his hot cheek pressed against the cold 
adamant of the higher law. Poor Jehu does no 
better at his books — ^lie may study himself into 
any of the fifty new American diseases, shriek 



186 PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

throiigli liigli-pressure oratory, write new theories 
of the universe in extempore trance, rave in the 
newspapers, and swear upon the stump ; old Ger- 
many can take the noisy boy on his knee and teach 
him his A B C's. Jehu is attractive, but his 
steeds always run away with him. It is a sorry 
ambition, this rage for being " fast ;'' better be an 
earnest man, an earnest woman, and grow as the 
years grow, and you will see all along your way 
the bleaching bones of these insane runners for 
the prize of life. 

The crowning element in Sj)iritual Power is 
Purity. By Purity I mean more than that nega- 
tive amiability, or general inoffensive habit, whose 
sphere is the drawing-room and whose resistance 
to evil culminates in a flood of tears, or a passive 
submission to violence. The virtue I enforce is the 
combination of all mental and moral powers in a 
character that responds to the Divine Perfections, 
and realizes the ideal of Humanity. In such a 
character, heroism, strength, firmness, invincible 
rectitude and uncompromising liostility to evil are 
the central substances, enveloped and harmonized 
by enduring love and unaffected grace ; for men 
have yet to learn that power is really not power, 
till it is dissolved in affection and spiritualized 
into beauty. 



PEDANTRY AND POWER. 187 

Spiritual Power in its last analysis, is tlie consoli- 
dation of all gifts, acquirements, and opportunities 
into Character. A soul has not possession of its 
self, till it has banished every lower aim of life ; 
for any partial, object, however inspiring, becomes 
finally a chronic weakness. To cultivate all facul- 
ties, to seize every occasion, to acquire all possible 
learning, skill and experience, for the sake, first 
and last, always and everywhere of character ; to 
toil in professional life as a help in this grand pro- 
fession; to value social enjoyment and human af- 
fection, not for the pleasure they bring, but the 
manhood they enlarge ; to become a good citizen, 
that one may be a noble man ; to obey the decrees 
of nature, and wreathe life with joy, that the char- 
acter may be refined ; this is the end of life, this 
is Spiritual Power, the end of culture. For Char- 
acter is good in itself, is not a coin to buy happi- 
ness, but is the sublime object of human existence 
in time and eternity. 

How such a purpose, inaugurated in youth, aids 
the man at every step in the acquisition of Spirit- 
ual Power, can only be known by joyful experience. 
How many knotty problems of action does it solve 
for the young man winding through the mazes of 
common life. How many confusing dilemmas 
does it clear up for the young woman ensnared in 



188 PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

the cobwebs of false society. A whole class of 
questionable occupations, perilous associations, and 
doubtful adventures, that beset every youth, are 
looked out of sight by the clear, forward-gazing 
eyes of Purity. Can it be a question to the young 
man or woman, resolved to make Character the 
end of life, whether dishonest business, selfish poli- 
tics, sensual indulgence, calculating marriage with- 
out love, followed by an ambitious domestic career 
without i)eace, shall be accepted, or rejected? 
These are questions that bewilder half the world, 
and to w^hich no refinement of logic will bring a 
solution, but which answ^er themselves the moment 
we step up to the heights of a worthy manhood. 
How does Purity clear the mind for all investiga- 
tions ; how it stirs the fire of industry ; how it con- 
soles and sustains us in failure ; how wise it makes 
us in success ; infinite are the modes in which it is 
our right hand of success in honorable enterprise. 
It brings the soul into union with the laws of na- 
ture, and led by the star of manhood, we go es- 
corted by the servants of Omnipotence, and our 
best deeds are but the symbol of the grander works 
done through us. 

And no less does Purity serve us in the use of 
our Power. The vital question with every human 
being, on which rests the whole claim to manhood 



PEDANTEY AND POWER. 189 

is not " what is the extent of his power ; but, how 
does he use his jpower f^ Whether the power re- 
sides in great possessions, in vast acquirements, in 
splendid genius, is all the same ; whether it has se- 
cured loftj position, or yet awaits its fitting place, 
is not the question ; but what motive lies behind 
it, of what quality and character is the man who 
wields it? Divorced from Character, Power is 
as hateful for its evil as contemptible for its 
weakness. 

There can be no compromise in the use of 
Power. In proportion to its quantity must it de- 
clare itself for good or evil. It is of little impor- 
tance on which side the moral line a fool stands ; 
he is impotent for good, harmless for evil ; but as a 
man rises above that zero of human ability, the good 
claims him, the evil fights for him with deadly per- 
sistence. Anything short of entire consecration to 
the Truth is then treason to the Spiritual order of the 
universe. It is a sin to withhold countenance from 
the Truth ; it is wicked to propose any agreement 
that admits the supposition that Error has right in 
the world ; it is ruin to go over to the bad side, and 
be a respectable or a flagrant villain. All such ex- 
periments, often as they are tried, come out finally 
in Spiritual Suicide. A temporary success, how- 
ever brilliant, is only part of a bad man's retribu- 



190 PEDANTRY AND POWER. 

tion, for it brings new responsibilities to be evaded 
and lays up a fearful account for the day of reckon- 
ing — a madness whicb finally compels sane men to 
rise and put him down. But Character is an ever 
growing wisdom, an ever culminating power, a 
quiet advocate for all nio;t's suffrage: a success 
whose only question is of time. Happy the youth 
that has learned this fact out of his books, and 
teachers, and School years — that Purity is the 
synonym of Spiritual Power. 

Every advance position of man makes Purity 
more indispensable and evil more destructive. 
Never was it so important that the power of a 
people should be wielded by character as to-day in 
America. What unnumbered curses beset us from 
a selfish culture ! All over society, in every cor- 
ner of our civilization, swarms this crowd of culti- 
vated mercenaries. Practical men, strong with 
the gifts of modern science and large experience in 
afiairs, ready to sell their infiuence for gold and 
monopoly ; women, radiant with beauty, and more 
radiant with mental gifts and social tact woven in- 
to the most subtle power that guides the world, 
turning traitors to the eternal laws of love and 
honesty ; refined Circassians, glorying in their price 
at the market-place, where fashion and Plutus 
bid for w^omanhood ; shrewd men, versed in 



PEDANTRY AND POWER. 101 

public affairs wlio know liistory, know the law, 
hold the mysteries of popular influence, and the Chi- 
nese puzzle of parliamentary tactics at their fingers' 
ends, calling out — " Who jDays most for the clev- 
erest defence of infamy, the subtlest cheat of the 
people, the most decisive betrayal of Freedom ?" 
deeply read men of science ; men that write books 
that everybody reads; editors that overlook the 
nation from their sanctum windows ; poets and 
artists that the refined love and honor ; men and 
women apt in conversation, whose presence is a 
magic centre in the community ; divines who have 
studied the fathers and overlooked reverent 
crowds — all for sale — some bought with the pot- 
tage of personal comfort, some bribed with the 
devil's gold, some baited with popular approbation, 
some purchased witli office ; spiritual Hessians — 
each ready to fight for the Truth or against tlie 
Truth, according as either gives better pay and ra- 
tions. This mob of cultivated mercenaries, not the 
mob of barbarians that make a night of civilization 
in the heart of the city and hold back the great 
day in the country, is making our republicanism a 
jest, and befogging a people in its search after 
manhood. The masses are driven hither and- 
thither by contrary gusts of passion and interest* 
and clouds are scaling our zenith, frowning as they 



192 PEDANTKT AND POWER. 

climb, because so many able men and women 
have their price — seem not to know that character 
in such as themselves is the nation's ballast — that 
where the culture of a generation is vitiated and 
debased bj sovereign selfishness the crowds be- 
low are degraded to base instruments to work its 
wicked will. Every mercenary powerful mind in 
America is a gun charged with hot shot aimed at 
the inflammable citadel of our freedom. Will you, 
young men, young women of 'New York, go forth 
to join this pretorian band? or shall Purity lead 
you to the ranks of that little army, which hard 
beset and often driven from the field, bears in its 
heart the hope of the continent. We can go on 
with such mental culture as we have; there are 
clever people enough in the United States, if we 
can only have Purity to direct the actual energy 
we have. Oh, could all this skill, this money, this 
enterprise, this daring heroism, this learning, this 
popular intelligence, all that is strong in man and 
lovely in woman, become a weapon in the hand of 
a genuine national character, what a republic this 
would be ! 

We look to the youth of our commonwealth to 
bring in this reign of Spiritual Power, the antago- 
nist of Pedantry, the result of Freedom and Ear- 
nestness culminating in Purity. In the great 



PEDANTRY AND POWER. 193 

scliool of our best civilization, man and woman can 
be furnished together for the holy mission of civil- 
izing the republic. Each may here be developed 
in characteristic power, both may here join hands 
in lofty purpose, together they may swear a great 
oath against the barbarism that yet shadows our 
sunniest uplands and broods over all the deep places 
of the land — one and all, they may resolve to give 
ignorance, ugliness, superstition and evil no quar- 
ters. Happy are you who are thus ready to meet 
your duties, for outside yonder door of maturity 
waits the proudest State of modern times, encir- 
cled by her children, to welcome you to a noble 
office. In every vocation, in every community, 
wherever you may be and whatever you may be 
called to do, in your fidelity reposes the hope of 
society. Go forth, young men, young women, and 
moch this ideal of power by the glorious reality of 
a cultivated and Christian State. 



YIII. 
THE CAPITOL 

AND 

THE HIGHER LAW. 

The siglit-seer in search of gorgeous monuments 
of imperial dominion, would not linger on the hill 
crowned by the modest capitol of 'New York ; but 
he who would behold in a public edifice the repre- 
sentative of a peculiar and protracted struggle for 
a Christian Democracy, need go no farther than the 
city of Albany. From the steps of our capitol he 
may overlook the scenes of the two most impor- 
tant political assemblies ever called in America — 
the meeting of colonial Governors in July, 1748, to 
deliberate on the scheme of taxing the people, 
and the convention of delegates in June, 1754, at 
which the plan of a Federal Union was presented 
by Franklin, who lived to see his early dream 
mocked by a more majestic reality. Out of the 
former of these conventions came the oppression of 

195 



196 THE CAPITOL AND 

Great Britain, out of tlie latter tlie American 
Union. Against that despotism no State rendered 
more signal services tlian ISTew York, and 'Nev^ 
York is now the State whose final position will 
decide whether that Union shall degenerate to a 
new Empire, or advance to a Christian Eepnblic. 
Onr unpretending capitol sits upon its hill, the sym- 
bol of a political struggle in IsTew York whose his- 
tory, when truly written, will be a permanent 
accession to the annals of humanity. 

Massachusetts was founded by the radical 
English mind of the ITth century ; and starting 
from Plymouth Eock, the idea of individual free- 
dom has scaled the Rocky Mountains and this 
year comes back from the Pacific shore the res- 
ponse to the Pilgrims in the new free Constitution 
of Oregon. Yirginia was founded by the repre- 
sentatives of the English gentry of the 17th cen- 
tury ; and the landed monopoly and chattel slavery 
of fifteen American States is but the lengthened 
shadow of that British aristocracy, ever creeping 
farther south to find in Central America the home 
now denied it in the JSTorth. To ITew York, 
seated midway between these radical States, was 
given the problem of moulding a population, the 
most diverse of any that has colonized this continent, 
into the most powerful Republic of modern times. 



THE HIGHEK LAV/. 197 

To briefly recall the elements of this great execu- 
tiye process and set forth the supreme law of a 
Christain citizenship for our Empire State, is the 
object of this discourse. 

The genius of despotism stood by the cradle of 
Kew York civilization and has never ceased to 
threaten till the present day. The State was 
founded in 1614 by a trading company from a 
nation where popular liberty was then unknown : 
and from the possession of the Holland merchants 
it became, in 1668, the manor of the Duke of York. 
Feudalism was thus established on the Hudson 
Eiver that for two centuries controlled her des- 
tinies in its two most odious forms of a great 
landed aristocracy and negro chattel slavery. 
Under the shadow of this oppression, popular intel- 
ligence languished and has slowly fought its way 
up to its present attainment. The diversity of 
nationality which always made our largest city a 
caravansary for the whole civilized world, and has 
planted obstinate prejudices of race all over our 
wide domain, long prevented that entire fusion of 
the people which is the soul of enterprise and the 
spirit of a compact Kepublicanism. The central 
and commanding position of 'New York in the 
original colonies has always exposed her civilization 
to formidable dangers. Her northern frontier long 



198 THE CAPITOL AND 

bore tlie brunt of Frencli invasion, leagued with the 
most formidable of the Indian tribes. Her com- 
mercial metropolis was selected by English tyranny 
as the most suitable place for repeated experiment 
in despotism. On the banks of her great rivers 
the American revolution twice turned a short 
corner; and our Highlands were the watch-tower, 
and fortress of that long struggle for independence. 
Yery early did her political imj)ortance as the 
opponent of Virginia involve her in the corrupting 
whirlpool of JSTational affairs, and with the Admin- 
istration of Washington commenced that conflict 
between federal and State patronage which still 
debauches every generation of her politicians. 
On the island of Manhattan has sprung np the com- 
mercial exchange of the old and new worlds, and the 
gold of two continents is every year cast into her 
scale, against the rights of man. Her landed aris- 
tocracy has perished before the more subtile invad- 
ing power of the gigantic corporations that are 
fighting in the dark to replace the feudalism of 
the landowner by the oligarchy of the merchant : 
and the last twenty-five years has witnessed the 
conversion of her chief cities into little foreign 
nationalities, challenging the right and defying the 
power of the government to treat them as vital 
portions of the commonwealth. 



THE HIGHER LAW. 199 

But on the other side of the cradle of our Her- 
cules, stood the genius of Freedom. Among the 
emigrants to 'New jSTetherlands came many smart- 
ing from the tyranny that had devastated their 
Euroj)ean homes and driven them exiles for liberty 
across the sea. Out of this element arose the 
struggle for representation which convulsed the 
Dutch colony, and was not staid by English 
power till it reached its goal, and in 1683, sixty- 
nine years after the settlement of Albany, gained 
that first assembly of seventeen representatives of 
the people of New York. For ninety-two years 
the history of that little AssemJ)ly marks the 
rugged road by which the colony fought its way 
up to independence. Brow-beaten and tempted 
and prorogued by a succession of insolent British 
governors, backed by a subservient council, it had 
a charmed existence, for it was the concentration 
of the free side of colonial life. It rallied again 
and again on the struggle for the revenue, pro- 
tested in documents that might stir the blood of 
the most supple politician (if such individuals ever 
read the records of the Fathers) ; and when it 
succumbed to the rising storm of foreign wrath in 
1775, out of its ashes sprung the Provincial Con- 
gress, which on the 9th of July, 1776, ratified the 
Declaration of Independence : in 1777 adopted the 



200 THE CAPITOL AND 

first constitution which for forty-four years was the 
organic law of the State : sat armed during the war 
wherever it could find a refuge, and with George 
Clinton for Governor, took its place in the Union 
in 1797. 

Thanks to the tyranny that in 1663 placed the 
Judiciary of 'New York in complete dependence 
on the crown, a fire was kindled that has burned 
till every court in our great State is now created 
by the people. The very diversity of our popula- 
tion has always made ecclesiastical tyranny an 
impossibility. Every attempt by Catholic or Pro- 
testant church ^to control the State has brought 
down the people in an avalanche on its head ; and 
every party formed on a sectarian j)latform has 
vanished as soon as it was born. And as a. provi- 
dential compensation for the temptations of our 
central position, our people have gained from it a 
certain largeness of view and facility of dealing 
with public affairs which has developed an execu- 
tive power which, always eminent, has finally 
eclipsed every American State. Half a century 
ago, began that wondrous tide of emigration from 
the eastern hive, which has built up a new nation 
west of Albany, the ally of freedom on the Hud- 
son, taking up the battle, where the old patriots 
left it, and carrying it on to victory. The day 



THE HIGHER LAW. 201 

wlien De Witt Clinton discovered that to link his 
name with the Erie Canal was a more permanent 
honor than to become President of the Kepnblic, 
inangurated an era of poj)nlar enterprise, which in 
sending a railroad to everj corner of the State, 
and creating the daily press of onr great cities, and 
arousing the masses everywhere to activity, has 
become the missionary of freedom which, now. 
Tinder the name of an " Emigrant Aid Society," 
has taken the field against piracy in Central Amer- 
ica, and aspires to the colonization of a continent 
with free men. And, best of all, the free school 
is now fairly on its iron legs which will run to and 
fro, and never tire, till intelligence and freedom 
pervade om- illustrious commonwealth. 

This great conflict rapidly approaches its crisis, 
and no man doubts on whose banners victory will 
alight. A few more efforts to remodel the institu- 
tions of i:N"ew York, on a scale demanded by her 
present growth and her greater future ; the last 
relict of feudal vassalage and disability of race 
swept away ; a few years more of unrelenting 
devotion to liberty ; will forever consecrate the 
policy of our State to the rights of men. And 
when the Empire State finally assumes the leader- 
ship of the host of a Christian civilization, the revo- 
lution that began in 1615 in her Broadway will 
0* 



202 THE CAPITOL AND 

close by the assurance that tliroiigli the countless 
ages of the futnre, the dominant and creative 
power on the western continent will be the civiliz- 
ation of the Saviour's golden rule : and over her 
avenues of travel, on her ships, and upon the wings 
of her press, the evangel of freedom will fly to all 
the nations of the world. 

Citizens of ISTew York, this is your past ; your 
work is before you; your destiny beckons from 
the future. Standing in your Capital City, let me, 
as a citizen of your State, a citizen of the United 
States, and a teacher of Christianity, speak of your 
obligations, and direct your contemplation to the 
eternal law of God, which embosoms all earthly 
justice, and controls the affairs of men. In no 
spirit of sect or party, in no personal controversy 
with those who solicit the votes of to-day by blas- 
phemy against Him who endureth forever, let me 
expound that Higher Law which holds every soul 
in the Republic by sanctions, as profound as the 
humanity of man, as everlasting as the divinity of 
the most High. 

The conception of a government by the whole 
people is the inevitable result of the Christian idea 
of God and man. God is the Father of all men, 
and has made of one blood all nations upon the 
earth. The inhabitants of this world are all his 



THE HIGHER LAW. 203 

children, inheritors of His nature and heirs of His 
immortality. Mankind is a family, related in its 
every member more closely than any earthly ties 
can bind together. The sole obligation of hnmani- 
ty as a whole, and in its every individual, is love 
to God and love to man. On this foundation of 
adamant rests our claim for human rights and dem- 
ocratic government. 

For the government of God is not the ruling ot 
an arbitrary despot over an empire of abject slaves, 
but the training of a world of immortal children 
into holiness of character through a moral disci- 
pline. Every citizen in God's vast republic is free, 
and, encompassed by influences human and divine, 
decides this crowning question of character alone. 
The inevitable law of a God of love is ever before, 
the wondrous agencies of an ineffable benignity 
invite and the certainty of retribution warn him, 
but no arbitrary fate drags him into heaven or 
thrusts him into perdition. I^o prisoner of despotic 
justice, man walks a free citizen of a divine gov- 
ernment that respects his natural rights as a living 
immortal soul, and rules only to develop that soul 
into an ever expanding image of its Creator. 

Then must every human government, in imita- 
tion of God's, rule men only to aid in the unfold- 
ing of a character founded on love, and the crea- 



204 THE CAPITOL AND 

tion of a state which shall be the kingdom of 
heaven. In such a state no man or class can as- 
sume a power which God himself does not claim ; 
to own and dispose of men by arbitrary selfishness. 
The natural rights of every citizen must be re- 
spected, and to every one must be guaranteed free- 
dom to act out his human capacities and become 
what his Creator intended. The right of a man, a 
class, a race, to plunder the least soul of its free- 
dom in such use of its faculties is no " divine 
right," for no divine being thus governs men ; but 
a Satanic travesty of God's supremacy. Human 
government thus becomes one of the agencies by 
which God educates His children into the citizen- 
ship of eternity; a humble imitation of His re- 
public wherein love reigns supreme, and justice is 
but a divine method of its administration. All 
authority of human government is from its resem- 
blance to this government of God; there is no other 
real authority among men, and in proportion as it 
departs from this law of love and reverence for 
human freedom does it forfeit its claim on our reve- 
rence and obedience. All just government is by 
divine right, and while acting according to God's 
law of love, claims our respect by divine authority ; 
and to disobey it is to renounce the allegiance to 
the Father of all ; to drop our high citizenship in 



THE HIGHER LAW. 205 

the divine order and become the slave of disorder 
and its father, the devil. 

But where resides the original authority to insti- 
tute such government on earth, which shall be one 
of God's agents to mould this world into the king- 
dom of heaven? The source of all secondary au- 
thority in human affairs is the individual soul. 
Every intelligent being is first and last and forever, 
a citizen of God's great republic, and can never 
become an alien therefrom by any action of man. 
Whatever human arrangement he accepts, is with 
the full understanding that he shall be required to 
do nothing inconsistent with this primary obliga- 
tion ; lohatever constitution 7ie sioears to obey^ the 
n^ery oath is an affirmation that he loill not disohey 
GofTs law of love I iorwhat a blasphemous absur- 
dity to swear in the name o^ God to dAsobey God. 
And in every contested question between human 
government and the individual, the final appeal is 
to the higher and prior citizenship of the divine re- 
public through conscience, its ever-present deputy 
in the sou.1. Such appeal is always heard on high, 
though scorned below, and in the long run every 
individual has his rights, to the confusion of a 
w^orld in opposition. Conscience, the final delibe- 
rate voice of the soul, after all the evidence is in 
and the whole ground of duty has been surveyed. 



206 THE CAPITOL AND 

is tlie law of human duty ; not hecaicse the individ- 
ual inva7''ial)ly will go right y hut the obedience to 
conscience is the recognition of the s^ijyi^eine obliga- 
tions to obey God^s law of love forever. This right 
to appeal to the higher law no man does or can lay 
down on his entrance into any association of men ; 
could he, the renunciation would be the wreck of 
his manhood, and from a living soul he would fall 
to the degradation of a mechanical power. 

With this reservation of appeal to God, man 
may enter the government which comes nearest 
the divine order, because in it the natural right 
to free development is best secured — a Republic. 
Here a majority rules to-day as the servant of the 
whole, subject in its act to the revision of every 
individual through free thought, speech, or influ- 
ence, and liable at stated periods to be called to 
deliver up its trust, or change its policy. For the 
majority of the Republic is not the despot of the 
minority, but the servant of the whole ; and when 
it comes down from its lofty elevation of acting for 
the best welfare of the whole state, and seeks to 
punish or oppress the minority, the act is not civil 
government, but barbarian piracy. And when a 
majority, by corrupt acts, bribery, the terrorism or 
seductions of power, or any way but an appeal to 
its services to the people, seeks to perpetuate its 



THE HIGHER LAW. 207 

dominion, it is iisnrpation and ungodly tyranny. 
But where the majority serves the state, full in 
view of the conscience of every man, always sub- 
ject to periodical dismissal or approval, there is the 
nearest approach to the divine order now possible 
on earth. 

So is the government of the people, by the peo- 
ple through a representative majority, the best im- 
itation of God's government now attainable, and 
claims the obedience and cooperation of every in- 
dividual according as it realizes to him the divine 
order. Then is our republicanism founded on the 
authority of the Higher Law. Then is Democracy 
but another name for the Golden Rule. And the 
citizen at the ballot-box, the legislator in the Capi- 
tol, the Judge on the bench, the Executive in the 
chair of state, are all agents selected by the divine 
wisdom, to promote justice and holiness on earth. 
The least these agents can safely do the better for 
the man, since human government is not to super- 
sede the divine, but chiefly to protect man from in- 
justice, and place the weakest and strongest in the 
position to freely develop his nature into the stat- 
ure of the perfect man in Christ. 

And herein appears the folly of that Democracy 
which openly denounces God and proclaims a 
state free from every moral restraint. For if there 



208 THE CAPITOL AND 

be no God, as certain of tlie Red Republicans say, 
pray what becomes of the rights of man ? If the 
sonl be only the temporary result of material com- 
bination, with no claim to spirituality, where are 
its natural rights ? Talk of the right of Freedom, 
to think, speak, act in a being that has no living 
soul, no radical moral obligation, no hmnan alle- 
giance to a creative mind, and an immortal hu- 
manity ? Why, such a race as this is not a human 
race, but a great machine, whose cranks and 
wheels, and pulleys all spin around the laws of 
a remorseless fate, where freedom cannot exist 
and progress is a dream, and life itself, but the 
submission of the soul to the animal. We can 
understand that the suffering millions of Europe, 
maddened by the religious pretensions of their 
oppressors in church and state, should in their 
frenzy imagine that religion is itself their chief 
oppressor. But that a man should laboriously 
reason away his soul to prove his right to freedom 
is like the miser who killed himself to realize on 
his life insurance. The true remedy for Europe, 
is to unmask the hyj)Ocrites who steals the clothes 
of religion to serve the devil of their ambition, 
to explode the divine rights of kings by the as- 
sertion of the divine paternity of God, and tlie 
divine nature of man, his immortal child, and 



THE HIGHER LAW. 209 

compel a Satanic selfishness to abdicate in favor of 
a Christian civilization, founded on the love of the 
brother. May the day be far distant, when the 
pious heroism and devotional patriotism of our 
fathers shall give way either to the moon-struck 
meanderings of an atheistic republicanism, or the 
frantic appetite for tyranny by which men give 
melancholy evidence how deeply the iron of old 
oppression is rusted into their innermost souls. 

Therefore, when we affirm that every citizen of 
'New York should carry his religion into the sphere 
of his political conduct, we neither assert any 
union of church and state, nor claim any right of 
ecclesiastical dictation of legislation, nor justify 
the position outside of society assumed by a sin- 
cere but mistaken class of public reformers. No 
visionary and impracticable scheme of conduct, but 
the most practical and possible application of the 
everlasting laws of right to every act of public 
and private life is our demand. We reaffirm the 
simple truth announced by Jesus Christ: "What- 
soever ye would that men should do to you, do you 
even so to them." With every competent expoun- 
der of Christianity, since the day of Christ, we 
maintain that every member of human society is 
bound by an eternal obligation to gain a holy char- 
acter founded on love to God and man, and to act 



210 THE CAPITOL AND 

from that character in every human relation. As 
the family, the market, the pulpit, the saloon claim 
our best manhood and -^^omanhood, that home, 
trade, proj^hesy, and pleasure, may all be elevated 
by religion, so is the realm of citizenship no excep- 
tion to this ; but whoever goes in there shall carry 
his entire manbood and abate not one jot or tittle 
of his Christian integrity. 

It has been affirmed that while the preacher 
should expound the abstract law of right, the 
statesman should ignore it in favor of expediency. 
A true expediency is only a righteous man doing 
all the good that present cirGumstances permit as a 
stepping-stone to hetter aohievements ; and any other 
expediency is as disgraceful in the senate as in the 
church. Strange morality this — that while a man 
sits in his pew on Sunday where he can do nothing^ 
he may achiowledge the obligations of God^s law / 
hut when he sits in the Gapitol and holds the civil- 
ization of New York in the hollow o^ his hand, 
he is no longer hound hy such obligation, Coidd 
Satan ash for a more C07nplete license than this f 
Life is the place where men prove their religious 
character ; in the chui'ch they can only meditate 
and be instructed. What a caricature of Christ- 
ianity to glow with sacred fires before the altar, 
and cast off the eternal law of love upon the tern- 



THE HIGHER LAW. 211 

pie steps. Let no sophistry of this kind delude the 
citizens of our State ; for only on condition that 
every soul in 'New York labors for the highest 
Christian character and throws its whole force 
persistently on the side of righteousness in every 
corner of life, will our great domain lead the world 
as the first republic. 

This religious obligation holds every inhabitant 
of New York in his relations to that form of social 
affairs into which he is born. For the evils of 
that system of government into which we are 
called by tiiC fiat of Providence we are not resj^on- 
sible. They are the results of the wickedness of 
those who have gone before, and society as we find 
it at our appearance in life is our field of opera- 
tions. Our whole duty concerning it is to reform 
as much evil and conserve as much good therein 
as we can by the healthy, constant exercise of our 
best powers through life. This done, our charac- 
ter is guiltless for that evil we cannot remove, and 
human affairs are left on a higher basis for our ex- 
istence. Each inhabitant of the State should labor 
according to his opportunity in the best place he 
can honorably occupy and all endeavor to leave 
society a more heavenly thing than they found it. 
What does this obligation demand of us as 
citizens, rulers and subjects of the law? 



212 THE CAPITOL AND 

It demands that each individual of the Empire 
State shall gratefully accept all the faculties, rights, 
privileges and opportunities into which he is born, 
and out of these materials mould the best possible 
character and throw the whole force of manhood 
or womanhood in the scale of a Christian Demo- 
cracy. 

The voter is the most privileged person in our 
State ; for, in addition to all the opportunities of 
moral influence, his yearly vote can shape the poli- 
tical policy of a great community and may be the 
turning point in the destiny of America. To say 
that he should use such a position, the highest in 
the world, to create a lofty religious character, ap- 
ply the law of love in every sphere of life, and em- 
ploy his political opportunities for the largest good 
of man, is a truism that is ignored not because it is 
unreasonable, but because it conflicts with the 
wickedness that scorns reason and right. The 
spectacle of a voter in E"ew York using his whole 
weight of character and opportunity to hinder or 
crush out any portion of God's family is one over 
which evil spirits may well rejoice, and angels veil 
their faces in shame and grief. jSTo man can pre- 
scribe the course of policy of any individual ; that 
is an affair of his own conscience ; but he may 
command every voting citizen, on the authority of 



THE HIGHER LAW. 213 

God's law, to use Ms glorious privilege to the ut- 
most and follow tlie highest leading of his unse- 
duced conscience in his relations to the State. And 
whatever inconvenience might occasionally result 
from a " crotchety conscience " in such case would 
be overcome a thousand fold by the advantages of 
righteousness in public affairs. 

The religious obligation to the State holds that 
portion of our male citizens who are yet denied the 
right of suffrage, either from unjust prejudice 
against color, or a judicious preparatory naturali- 
zation. Some of the worst dangers to the commu- 
nity may arise from the notion that the members 
of this class are released from the duties of Christ- 
ian patriotism. Under their present disabilities 
they are blessed beyond their brethren in other 
ages and nations. Will they use their influence 
to advance their own freedom and the general 
good, or to breed discord and disgrace by degene- 
racy of character and disobedience to law ? Let 
these men remember, that if still denied the crown- 
ing privilege of citizenship, they are called by 
God to a determined advocacy of the rights of the 
oppressed. And on no man is there such a bless- 
ing as upon him who employs his own misfortune 
to gain the sympathy and espouse the cause of his 
brother in suffering. Every virtuous and patriotic 



214 THE CAPITOL AND 

alien in 'New York is strengthening the hands of 
those who are using their own privilege to fight 
his battles ; every wicked and riotons man of this 
class is confirming the hostile purpose of those 
who jet deny his rights. 

Next in outward privilege are the women of the 
Empire State : deprived of many social and j)oliti- 
cal privileges by society, yet possessing, beyond 
their sisters of any state or age, the sacred opportu- 
nities of womanhood. Their political duties are 
not to be overlooked, because of certain disa- 
bilities. To the7n, cliiejiy^ is intrusted the 
moulding of character in youth — the greatest 
earthly ojpjportunity 'j and the most intimate rela- 
tion to, and subtlest influence over the heart of 
manhood — the second privilege of humanity. 
The voice of God commands them to use this 
central and all-pervading influence for the highest 
good of the State. A race of mothers such as the 
women of Nqw York can now become, might edu- 
cate a race of men who would count it the highest 
privilege of their manhood to welcome them to 
every position they might claim. We cannot 
understand the feelings of any woman who per- 
mits herself to be Qi-ushed by her position, and 
neglects the practice of the most precious human 
obligations. Her political duties are no less im- 



THE HIGHER LAW. 215 

portant than those of man : let her perform them to 
the utmost, and if society refuse her what she then 
asks, it will be the first time American men have 
denied woman anything on which she has insisted. 

To the yonth of E'ew York what an invitation is 
given to prepare themselves by the largest human 
culture for the republic of another generation, 
compared with whose grandeur of resource and 
inspiring obligations, our present State is but a 
family party. Do not fear, young men and women 
of 'New York, that you can know too much, or be 
too noble for the inheritance that awaits you. 
Heirs of the most splendid heritage of modern 
times, become the illustrious men and women 
whom it will gracefully adorn. 

No inhabitant of ISTew York can rightly sepa- 
rate himself from his obligations to society. The 
least privileged has a protection and opportunity 
deserving a boundless gratitude and claiming his 
best devotion to the State. It is a spurious asser- 
tion of individuality to affect to stand aside from 
this great family and criticise the doings of other 
men : for man was made for society, and his mis- 
sion is to bear the law of love into human affairs, 
and share in the toils of the wise and good for a 
better day. 

The law of God requires no impractical be- 



216 THE CAPITOL AND 

havior in the rulers diosen to posts of influence in 
tlie Empire State. It does forbid that Tvretched 
traffic in offices bj candidates, which makes the 
very name of free institutions a jest. / hnoio of 
no good a Tuler can do to J^ew ITorlt^ which will 
compensate for the evil of h'ihing one voter ^ or 
corrit^ting the public inind hy one falsehood. 
Every structure of justice built over a defiled 
franchise, or a dishonest system of party machin- 
ery, is a house built on the crust of an abyss. 
Liberty suffers for every unveracity perpetrated 
in her name : and, to huy a inan in New York 
even to vote a.gainst despotism is to enslave a man 
to-day for the uncertain expectation of liberating 
humanity to-morroio. The enemies of man will 
not heed our warnings : but on the escutcheon of 
the friends of man, let no stain of suspicion abide : 
for surely as they endeavor to gain power by any 
unworthy arts, will the defence of human rights 
be taken from them and given to those whose pure 
hands are fit to bear the banner of justice. 

The legislator is not the attorney of his party ; 
but first the servant of God and next the servant 
of the whole State. His sole duty is to reenact as 
much of the law of God as the peojple can novj sus- 
tain and enforce^ and hy his whole influence to 
educate society to a higher political morality. To 



THE HIGHER LAW. 217 

the judiciary is committed the office of interpreting 
the law and presiding over the administration of 
justice, and if there be a crime in America it is 
the prostitution of that exalted position to the uses 
of any party or interest lower than man. 

When in the legislative, judical or executive 
sphere a controversy occurs, let the ruling always 
he in favor of man — wlio loas not made for laws 
and courts^ hut courts and laios and constitutions 
for him. The organic law of the State is not an 
iron frame into which the public officer is to be 
driven to petrify into a machine, but the best 
realization of God's law that the State has so far 
obtained; hence to interi?ret it downwards in favor 
o^ the ha/rharism of the jpast^ is treason against 
humanity. A true statesmanship interprets organic 
laws upwards in favor of the civilization that is 
to come. Eead history and behold how every 
politician who has interpreted the organic laws of 
states downward towards barbarism has filed off 
into the limbo of human contempt and execration, 
and every statesman who has read constitutions 
upwards towards man has walked up to a throne 
where he now sits and receives the admiration of 
the world. 

Were the law of God thus applied in the sphere 
of citizenship and official duty, the question of 

10 



218 THE CAPITOL AND 

obedience to human laws would at once be simpli- 
fied. For the case would hardly occur that a law 
could be enacted by a righteous people which a 
good man could not obey. But we are not yet in 
the millennium, and our rulers sometimes forget 
God and man and command us to do what a Christ- 
ian manhood refuses to accept. A good man is not 
released from his obligations to the State by a bad 
law. He is still a citizen, though government 
turns against him, and his duty centres in sustain- 
ing a true order while he seeks to elevate the pub- 
lic conception of law. His duty increases in pro- 
portion to the degeneracy of legislation, and instead 
of quitting politics in disgust because of its cor- 
ruption, the best men should especially go in then 
and turn the scale. A godly citizen will submit to 
much wrong for the sake of order : he will 
patiently use every legal means of redi'ess, every 
force of moral influence, and count a life well 
spent in shaping a righteous policy that will gra- 
dually overcome the wrong. And if brought to a 
crisis, where the law commands him to commit a 
wicked act, he can testify his reverence to the State 
by suffering her penalties while he asserts his man- 
hood by refusing to disobey God. This has been 
in every past age one of the most efficient means 
of reform ; and no men have done more to advance 



THE HIGHER LAW. 219 

a good government than those martyrs who have 
suffered or died because they would not commit 
sin against God and humanity. 

I cannot recognize the right of armed revolution 
by the citizens of the State while the Republic pre- 
serves its reality. "While men can speak and write 
and vote and hold office they may suffer for the 
right ; but to grasp the sword is to dissolve the 
w^hole social fabric, to fall into anarchy and trust 
to luck for a reorganization of society. But under 
the forms of a republic a real despotism may 
creep in, and a minority be deprived of all just 
rights through the forms of law. Then revolution 
is the just appeal ; because physical life is not the 
most sacred thing on earth, and when it and the 
natural rights of the soul are confronted, the soul 
must stand and the body must fall. But this right 
of revolution is to be exercised only in the last 
extremity and never should be perverted to the 
ends of party agitation, or used to excuse the toil- 
some duties of peaceful reform. 

I am not ignorant of the possible abuse of these 
extreme rights of the subject of human law ; but 
those who assert the contrary doctrine seem to be 
ignorant of the abuses of their own. K the one 
may drive a fanatical citizen to his destruction, or 
agitate a State with fears of anarchy, the other in 



220 THE CAPITOC, AND 

the creed of despotism from the foundation of the 
world, and if adopted in a republic would leave 
every man and every minority at the unmitigated 
mercy of a wicked majority. The man who 
preaches unconditional submission to human law, 
preaches the political ideas of oriental tyranny, 
and if it be treason, as some say, to refuse to sin 
and suffer for that refusal, what shall we call the 
crime of sustaining an irresponsible despotism in 
the name of law ? This right of resistance, so far 
from treasonable, is the real safeguard of the 
Republic. There are few classes of men, there 
are few parties in the State which would not com- 
mit enormities beyond endurance, did they not 
know that man never has, never will, and never 
ought to submit to the last extremity of wrong, 
but will now, as he ever has, overthrow the tyrant 
that drives him to the wall, or perish in the conflict 
for human rights. While religion would guard 
this right of disobedience, and the appeal to the 
God of battles from every abuse, it would still 
assert it as the last human safeguard in every 
state of society the world has yet attained. 

These ideas of a religious patriotism are no fig- 
ments of philosophical speculation, but the daily 
bread of life for the citizens of our Commonwealth. 
On their hearty acceptance and application, dej)ends 



THE HIGHER LAW. 221 

our success in the long struggle of two hundred 
and forty-four years for the freedom of man in this 
goodly domain of nature. New York has the 
materials for a magnificent nation, and her first 
duty is by all justice and righteousness to lift her- 
self ever higher in the rank of noble States that 
stand for man ; and her second duty is like unto it, 
to throw her entire influence on the side of a 
Christian Democracy in the Federal Union. "When 
the Empire State shall have made up her mind for 
freedom, and spoken it in words that cannot be 
mistaken, and cannot be taken back, will the un- 
godly scramble for desj)otism in the national 
councils come to a swift end. From the midst of 
an age of conflict, from the summit of a crisis in 
the afi'airs of a Continent, rises the call as of an 
angel's voice to stand upright for Liberty, the 
cause of God and man. Shall the call be heard ? 
"When will 'New York spurn the rewards of tyran- 
ny, which endure but for a day, and accept the 
perils of that defence of freedom which ripens 
into the enduring glory of mankind ? 



IX. 

THE STUDIOS; 

OR, 

ART m NEW YORK. 

The most striking work of art, in the most at- 
tractive studio in tlie Capital City, is Palmer's 
model for liis coUossal gronp ; '' The Landing of 
the Pilgrims.''^ When elevated to its place in 
the pediment of a great public structure, this 
admirable work will afford a worthy symbol of 
the mission of Art in a Republican State. The 
barren landscape, haunted by the wolf and the 
savage, and brooded over by the wintry sky, 
incloses a group that represents the chief forces 
of a Christian civilization in their true relations. 
A strong man half reclines upon the cold ground, 
impatient of his overpowering fatigue. Between 
the shivered trunks of two gigantic trees, kneels 
another in meek resignation to a mysterious Provi- 

223 



224 THE STUDIOS ; OE, 

dence. A venerable scholar bows his head in a 
prayer, that elevates his human knowledge to a 
divine wisdom. A boy clings to the arm of a 
maiden, and a little girl nestles by the knees of a 
youth ; all in characteristic ways, oppressed or ex- 
cited by the strange scene. A young man leans 
upon his axe. A soldier bows his head with arms 
folded in stern devotion. A young woman kneels 
in pious trust, and a mother folds her late born 
child to her bosom, in overflowing gratitude to the 
Heavenly love ; while in the centre of the group, 
stands the majestic form of the Keligious Teacher, 
with outstretched arms, and face upturned in a pe- 
tition that binds all hearts in one, and prophecies a 
state, founded upon the Eternal Law. Every figure 
is representative of a vital force in American so- 
ciety. Tlie bond of union is no tyrant's mandate, 
nor priestly dogma, but the voluntary unity of free 
souls, in the sublime idea of consecration to the 
Father of all. " And glowing in every feature and 
attitude, and enfolding the whole group in an at- 
mosphere of wondrous grace, is that austere beauty 
which descends from heaven to earth only when 
all the elements of humanity concentrate in due 
proportion to form the kingdom of God. 

Let this achievement of a son of the Empire 
State, be our Symbol of an Art, which is no taste- 



ART IN NEW TOKK. 225 

ful ornament of a factitious gentility, but tlie ideal- 
ization of onr Commonwealtli. No bird of foreign 
plumage flying over tbe sea, and perching on our 
metropolitan roofs, is the artwliicli we celebrate, 
but tliat central Spirit of Beauty wliicb appre- 
hends and reproduces the splendors of our nature, 
penetrates to the sublimity of our idea of human- 
ity, and through the carved marble, on the painted 
canvas, in the blended sounds of music, by the 
proportions of architecture, and the arrangements 
of a free industry, in the higher loveliness of 
home, and the graces and pleasures of a society as 
generous as refined, proclaims the Harmony of a 
Civilization, which, founded on the reverence for 
God and man in the soul of every inhabitant of 
'New York, shall rise into the well-built fabric of a 
Republican State, great and glorious in its fidelity 
to the Eternal Rule of Love. 

The State of E"ew York has not withh olden her 
tribute to the progress of Art in America. Among 
the earliest associations for the promotion of good 
taste in our country was the Academy of Fine Arts 
in our chief city, established in 1804, by the exer- 
tions of such men as Chancellor Livingston, De 
Witt Clinton and Robert Fulton. In 1826, was 
founded the National Academy of Design by the 
energy of the Artists of the same city, led by one 

10* 



226 THE STITDIOS ; OR, 

wliose name is forever connected with the Mag- 
netic Telegraph, the crowning romance of Modern 
Life. At different times since, other associations 
have arisen in various portions of the State, which 
deserve the praise of awakening the inhabitants 
of a growing commonwealth to the claims of artis- 
tic cultivation. Li the honorable array of names 
devoted to the arts none are more worthy than 
those who wxre born upon our soil or have been 
drawn hither by our o]3portimities for the practice 
of their high profession. And whatever may be 
the claims of other States in special refinement, 
the imited voice of the country now declares our 
greatest city the centre of artistic influences for 
America. Within the memory of young men 
this door to European culture and refinement has 
been thrown wide open, and henceforth the old 
world will be laid under tribute for her best trea- 
sures to grace the life of the metropolis of the 
western continent. And by its commanding po- 
sition our State must become the grand distributor 
of these influences through the vast area from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific shores. The social ideas 
and the conceptions of art which prevail in our 
commonwealth must, by the necessities of that 
position, become the most powerful instructors of 
millions of our countrymen. Elected by Provi- 



ART IN NEW YORK. 227 

dence to guide the youthful taste of a nation on 
whose fate the hopes of human freedom are now 
staked ; with what purity of heart and energy of 
patriotic enthusiasm should we gird ourselves to 
the high task of making ]^ew York, now greatest 
in power, chief in the nobler eminence of a refine 
ment that is the form of justice and love. 

From our central and commanding position two 
decided tendencies in Artistic Life have already 
appeared. In many wealthy and cultivated cir- 
cles of our cities no one can mistake a sincere pre- 
judice in favor of those ideas of man and society 
which are the soul of old world despotism. This 
idea of man proceeds logically to the European 
idea of refinement as associated with a permanent 
nobility of wealth, rank, or cultivation and art as 
the finest luxury of an aristocracy rather than the 
idealization of a people's existence. Tliis belief 
appears in that wholesale imitation of foreign so- 
ciety, amusements, and arts which turns in disgust 
from the vital developments of native civilization 
and aims at building a little Europe in the cities 
of 'New York, which shall give down the law of 
life to the benighted freemen of the Empire State. 

In opposition to this effort to reproduce an old 
world conception of refinement, we everywhere 
discover the vigorous growth of that indescribable 



228 THE STUDIOS ; OR, 

and original taste, which is known all over the 
civilized world as New Yorhism. In its best ap- 
pearance it is the vigorous assertion of an enthn- 
siastic and confident individuality. The true New 
Yorker firmly believes himself the most splendidly 
endowed and circumstanced creature of God's 
earth. He identifies himself with the greatness 
of his State, and from this mount of vision 
generously dispenses himself among the rest of 
mankind as their various needs may demand. 
When bounded by the limits of moral law, this 
character with its inspiring swing of executive 
force, the bewildering grandeur of its imagination 
and the contagious generosity of its sentiments, 
is one of the most irresistible ever let loose on 
this planet, and contains the elements of im- 
mense success or fearful wreck in American afi'airs. 
But while we are occasionally inspired with its 
highest manifestations, we are too often shocked 
and disgusted with the splendid selfishness and 
magnificent vulgarity that attend its lower demon- 
strations. Our new prosperity is playing such 
antics in every town and village as shock every 
mind of true refinement. In the audacity of a 
social aristocracy seated on its heap of gold; in 
the frightful sensuality of multitudes of first people 
from New York to Niagara; in the ostentatious 



ART m NEW YORK. 229 

style of building, upliolsteiy, dress and equipage, 
and tlie steamboat manners and expensive pleasures 
by which hosts of our young people vainly at- 
tempt to become the gentlemen and ladies they 
never can be until they return to nature and com- 
mon sense ; and in that capacity of miscellaneous 
enthusiasm which leaves our metropolitan mind 
the victim to any powerful excitement from the 
horrors of a Burdell tragedy, or the fervors of a 
Great Awakening to the showy follies of a Broad- 
way reception of a popular demagogue or the 
pompous funeral of a native bully ; we are ever re- 
minded that our native development of taste is still 
dashing through the low grounds of materialism 
and in danger of being swamped in the slough of a 
new barbarism. 

Yet between these dangers of a servile worship 
of foreign ideas and a native barbarian luxury, 
we have no hesitation in choosing the tendency to 
New Yorkism. We know its present immorality 
and vulgarity, but this is not the whole, nor the 
most mtal part of its life. It is the people of New 
York trying to create a society cmd art expressive 
of their existence. As such we hail its belief in 
individual man, its grandeur of purpose, its splen- 
did generosity, its irresistible enthusiasm, and 
believe in these great elements is vigorous life to 



230 THE STUDIOS ; OE, 

shake itself clear of the ridiculous and wicked 
habits that now deform its character. Every 
first effort of a whole people for refinement is . 
necessarily rude and somewhat wrong-headed and 
low-hearted ; bnt in the sincerity with which ^ew 
York is rushing towards a splendid ideal, is a pro- 
phecy of success. And we can only praise that 
confident and enthusiastic sense of power, without 
which no great people can get out of the woods. 
A self-depreciating, finical, drawing-room refine 
ment, may be a pleasant guest at an evening 
entertainment in certain quarters, but it is a poor 
weapon to cut down the American forests of 
ignorance, vulgarity and sin, vanquish the thou- 
sand foes of freedom, and lay the corner-stone of 
a glorious State, deep and strong enough to bear 
up the majestic temple of a Christian society. 
We are not on the side of those who would detract 
from the refinement of the past and the old world. 
Thank God for all that has been and is there of 
beauty and cultivation. But 'New York has a better 
destiny than to go down on her knees before a 
class refinement, that dates from the contempt of 
man; even the destiny of inaugurating a refine- 
ment that includes the whole people of a great 
State. Let her take her stand boldly and hope- 
fully on man and work for him, and as she 



AET IN NEW YORK. 231 

advances in lier sublime toil, generously appro^Dri- 
ate every vital and congenial element of foreign 
or past culture that can be wrought into her web 
of beauty; and while withholding no admiration 
from the few souls whose genius and fame are of 
the world and for all time, still keep her footstep 
on her own soil and her eye lifted upward 
towards the rising sun and the " Excelsior " that 
inspired the faith of the fathers to make her what 
she is. For our art must he the idealization of 
man in his native dignity^ growing amid the cir- 
cumstances of a neio toorld into a nobler social state 
than the earth has yet beheld j an art to lohich all 
refinements of the old time and all culture of for- 
eign lands shall finally become tributary : and 
which can afford to be young and crude for a cen- 
tury in hope of a glorious maticrity^ which shall 
he a new descent of Beauty from Heaven to man. 

We insist on the fidelity of ]^ew York to her 
best native taste as the chief condition of asserting 
her position as the dispenser of ideas of beauty in 
the Republic. The path to American art is the same 
that w^as opened by the immortal declaration of our 
national independence. The true culture of every 
nation is the idealization of its deepest conviction 
and highest admiration in art and character ; and 
no people can permanently be attracted by what 



232 THE STUDIOS ; OE, 

is not rooted in tlieir most profound national life 
Every ordinary success in the realm of the beauti- 
ful has been achieved by obedience to this law. 

The sculpture, and architecture, and poetry of 
Greece were only the majestic idealization of what 
all Greeks believed of man. If it still remains the 
grandest monument to physical beauty and intel- 
lectual power ever erected by human genius, it is 
because symbolic of one view of humanity which 
will never be repeated on so complete a scale. The 
painting, poesy and architecture of the great Ca- 
tholic artists of the middle ages, were the highest 
representation of that sentiment of adoration for a 
Divine Polity which changed a barbarous Europe 
into the forms of modern civilization: and the 
permanence of this art is assured because the 
world can never again so entirely prostrate itself 
before this idea. Wlio does not know that the Ger- 
man music of the last century is the most subtle in- 
terpreter of the wondrous German character and 
civilization ; and must forever remain a world 
apart, wdierein humanity may read this phase of 
its varied history. 

The most characteristic political genius of Ameri- 
can civilization struck the key note of her art as 
the prophecy of her Republicanism in the sublime 
preamble to the Declaration of Independence. 



ART IN NEW YORK. 233 

Our nationality can become a commanding and en- 
during force in Imman affairs, only by fidelity to 
the belief in man, there announced. Man, tlie 
centre of the created universe, the crown of God's 
work and the brightest suggestion of His glory ; 
under divine guidance capable of self-government 
in all things ; instructed here in a school of moral 
and social freedom, for the larger realization of his 
destiny hereafter, is the corner-stone of American 
existence. On this rock of adamant must we build 
in our national art, or the foundations of our most 
showy imitations of foreign ideas will be under- 
mined and the memory of our servility in the 
domain of beauty pass away from the earth. 

Every success of the mind of 'New York in ideal- 
izing past ideas of man, however graceful and 
comj)lete in appearance, will be only the small suc- 
cess of a clique, and recognized only as imitation 
of what can never be twice done for eternity. But 
the sincere endeavor to symbolize her best idea of 
man will abide, however rude may be its first en- 
deavors. Many a page in the daily journal filled 
with the hot blood of our crude aspiration for free- 
dom will endure beyond the most elegant repro- 
duction of a literature that is passing away. And 
many an American artist of hopeful powers, is now 
laboriously paddling his craft back into the ideas 



234: THE STUDIOS ; OE, 

of the middle ages only to be lost in it gilded haze, 
while others of feebler skill bnt sterner fidelity- 
will be borne alone: the current of onr life to the 
haven of an honorable fame. Bnt that fame will 
be proj)ortioned to the faith in the most profound 
ideas of the Republic. 

There are many ways of believing in man, and 
the civilization of our Commonwealth is now be- 
fogged in the mists and bogs of a sensual " I^ew 
Yorkism." It is easy for our young artists to drink 
of this high wine of our luxurious selfishness, till in 
their heady enthusiasm they sink to the representa- 
tion of the material side of society and that part of 
nature where the brute and man unite in a com- 
mon admiration. If they are satisfied with tlie 
money, and flatulent praise and hectic notoriety 
which comes from the idealization of a " rowdy " 
nature and a " fast " humanity, they may be safely 
left to their doom. But the young men and women 
who swear eternal fealty on the altar of man's spiri- 
tual dignity, and paint, carve, build, sing, live from 
that with a persistence that will resist every surge 
of popular sensuality and delusion, will be known 
and loved in the 'New York that is to be. There- 
fore, let every wise man free himself from all sus- 
picions of a refinement that is less than the sym- 
bol of a paramount reverence for the soul as the 



ART m NEW YORK. 235 

brightest image of God ; believing that no vulgar- 
itj is so fatal in the end as that which despises one 
human being, and no beauty will endure save that 
which mirrors the eternal love of God. 

With this idea possessing his soul, let the citizen 
of IsTew York wander over his own superb domain 
of nature and envy no man. For whether he 
meditates the fair picture of his Metropolitan City, 
blending with her surrounding waves in the golden 
dimness of an October afternoon ; or from Catskill's 
summit beholds the valley of the Hudson smitten 
by the morning sun ; or Hoats over the liquid mys- 
tery of Lake George and contemplates her silent 
mountains and enchanted shores; or from the 
towers of Utica, queen of inland towns, sees 
Oneida's fields sloping upwards to her encircling 
hills ; or in the rail car exults in the grandeur that 
hurries past the traveller over Erie's path of splen- 
dor ; or in the tossing skiif uncovers his face and 
gazes upward where the rejoicing sea bounds over 
N^iagara's summit ; or from out the storm of spray 
on the " Maid of the Mist " beholds through watery 
vistas the emerald gates of Paradise swinging amid 
the flitting glory of a thousand vanishing rainbows ; 
or, tired of society, wanders off amid the awful 
summits of the Adirondack, and in the solitude of 
endless streams and boundless woods finds himself 



236 THE STUDIOS ; OE, 

in his eternal nnion with the Anther of creation ; 
everywhere is her nature the wondrous type of his 
soul's destiny and the subtlest symbol of his earthly 
career. 

Then let him rejoice to know that nowhere on 
this commonwealth does the land overlay the 
spirit, for 600,000 freemen owm its 13,000,000 cul- 
tivated acres and its wildernesses invite the occu- 
pation of thousands more. So is the earth in its 
native features and its cultivated aspects, adjusted 
to its lord, and man beholds therein his garden of 
industry and his emblem of existence. If this 
citizen be gifted with the genius to adorn the can- 
vas, let him follow the lead of our noblest painters, 
and in Durand's Catskill Cloves, and Hart's Esopus, 
and Boughton's fragrant hayfields of the Hudson, 
and Kensett's gorgeous autumnal view, and the 
Niagara of Church, recognize the true inspira- 
tion and follow, the path to fame. But if it be not 
given him to idealize the nature of ^N'ew York in 
any form of imitative art, let him remember that 
the perfect farm smiling out of a cultivated land- 
scape, the railway springing over a Portage bridge, 
the factory clustering around the mountain torrent, 
the steamer gliding over Champlain, and the ware- 
house beautiful in its order, and, chief of all, the 
tasteful home, are children of the same imagina- 



ART IN NEW YOEK. 237 

tioii tliat carves an " Indian Girl/' or sets a song 
of freedom to a people's voice. Let our youth be 
taught by parents and teachers tjie finest accom- 
plishment of looking at the nature of the Empire 
State with eyes of refined and generous enthu- 
siasm ; of sketching her scenes of beauty ; of living 
out of doors amid her ennobling and invigorating 
influences. So shall the people of this gracious 
domain learn to recognize the glory amid which 
they live ; and through affectionate admiration for 
nature, ever grow into worthier masters of a match- 
less heritage. 

When we come to the contemplation of the 
individual man as the subject of art, let us not fall 
into the heresy of representing him according to 
any fantasy of despotism. Let his servile relations 
be forgotten, let degrading associations be ignored, 
and be it the destiny of our artists to symbolize 
that native dignity and equality of right which 
is the deepest fact of his nature and the key to his 
history. We have no admiration to bestow on 
those skillful workmen who represent humanity 
according to an European or Asiatic pattern. We 
felt that an Art Union that was filling our country 
houses with pictures of society in which the colored 
American appeared only as a slave, was a sinner 
against good taste no less than humanity. We 



238 THE STUDIOS ; OE, 

shall liail the day when our native music will strike 
a loftier string than its negro minstrelsy, which, 
spite of onr laughter, is the mournful song of our 
national shame. "When the drama is elevated 
enough to drop her flunkey adulation to kings and 
queens, and can see the tragedy and comedy in the 
life of Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, citizens of the 
United States of America, eminent divines will not 
quarrel over the barren question whether the thea- 
tre is the road to heaven or hell, for the j^eople will 
go to the play and return nobler men and women, 
and leave the doctors to weave cobwebs at their 
leisure. The artists are now alive who dare chal- 
lenge the people to admire the angelic childhood, 
generous womanhood and strong manhood of New 
York scul|)tured in living marble or breathing on 
the enchanted canvas. Let the youth of our State 
learn music in school, at home, everywhere in their 
daily life; and the harmony that sings of man's 
innate nobility will by and by entrance them 
beyond the mysteries of the foreign concert or 
opera, endured for dear fashion's sake. "Wherever 
man in his individual dignity appears in our 
higher poetry, let us hail the advent of a new fact 
in literature, and let the severe test of admittance 
to our fraternity of artistic life be reverence for the 
soul, devotion to freedom, belief in the supreme 



AKT IN NEW YORK. 239 

beauty of men's eternal cliildliood to the father 
whose smile is the love of the imiverse. 

This central reverence for man will be our guide 
through the region of those Ornamental Arts which 
beautify society while they stimulate the industry 
of the people. The architecture of E'ew York 
should not, like that of Greece and Rome, work 
downward from palaces and temples, but upward 
from the American home. The temporary fashion 
of huddling in marble fronted caravansaries, in im- 
itation of old-world habits, will finally disappear, 
and the home, built and furnished according to 
the means, convenience and finest taste of a Re- 
publican family, will become the germ of native 
architecture and ornamental arts. In 'New York 
the State and Church are but associations of free 
citizens, and our buildings for the accommodation 
of the servants of the people, and the ceremonies 
of Government and Religion, will finally represent 
a Christian Democracy, as certainly as the acres of 
palace and cathedral, and the royal parks and 
hunting grounds, symbolize the Despotism abroad. 
Whatever public structure in New York sacrifices 
the convenience of the people to any architectural 
eff'ect, will eventually be condemned. The finest 
and most characteristic public rooms in America 
are the beautiful halls that are appearing in every 



240 THE STTJDIOS ; OR, 

citj and viiiage in oui- Northern States, where 
multitudes can assemble for every honorable pur- 
pose, from an evening's entertainment to a Sun- 
day's worship. This Democratic assembly room 
will by and by expand to a People's Temple ; as 
the new hotel has sprung up to minister to the 
wants of our migratory population. 

Who will teach us to study the wants of a ^ew 
York family, and build a home where economy, 
comfort, independence and the elegance of true 
refinement may concentrate ? Our State offers 
such facilities for a charming domestic life as few 
spots on earth. Our long green valleys, threaded 
by the railroad, open their arms to the weary citi- 
zen ; our thousand inland cities and villages can 
become as many centres of taste and virtue. 
"When the young women of the Empire State 
learn to waive the excitements of a brick box on 
Madison Square, and the colored river of Broad- 
way in favor of a spacious home, and a garden 
cultivated by their own hands, with cheerfulness, 
usefulness and long life in our lovely country ; 
when the fashionable heresy of female idleness, 
shall be exploded in favor of the introduction of 
women to the practice of the many ornamental 
arts that transform a hard, barren existence to a 
genial and fruitful life ; we may look for a new 



ART IN NEW YOKK. 241 

revelation of Beauty wliich will convert tlie ex- 
terior of the Commonwealth to a grander picture 
than artistic genius has conceived. 

The polite society of our State must recognize 
the native worth of Man, and free itself from all 
narrow conceits, which hinder the development of 
that cosmopolitan fraternity of feeling which be- 
comes a Kepublic composed of all civilized nations. 
While the descendants of each race, or the disci- 
ples of each " ism," or the retainers of each family, 
cuddle in little exclusive knots, w^e shall have no 
society worthy our great Civilization. Fortunate- 
ly there is little danger that the aristocracy of 
money will ever become a permanent fact; our 
periodical panic can be trusted to dissolve any col- 
lection of expensive families to their original ele- 
ments as often as may be desirable. The artificial 
manners of a clique will hardly corrupt our peo- 
ple while they only expose their unfortunate pro- 
fessors to that broad popular humor which is the 
best human instrument yet devised for " taking the 
starch out " of affected superiority. 

"We must understand here, that a true American 
society means, first : a Christian home, strong, 
bright, hospitable and simple as becomes the sov- 
ereigns of a free soil ; and secondly, a wide, varied 
and natural style of social intercourse, excluding 

11 



242 THE STUDIOS ; OR, 

only vice and obstinate vulgarity. Doubtless in 
the organization of such a society, many a fastid- 
ious mind will find ample occasion for disgust at 
the rudeness and sensuality of the people. But 
since a Christian gentleman or lady should go 
abroad not to exhibit their own superiority, but to 
entertain, and elevate, and bless their fellow beings, 
we need waste no special pity on such finical 
griefs. Our social boisterousness and ambitious 
taste are but the eflects of our popular vigor, and 
how much nobler to use the refinement we have to 
lift a neighborhood to the love of Beauty, tlian to 
draw off into the delicately tinted shell of our 
small conceit, and be a social snail in a world of 
living men. 

Our natural amusements are not being developed 
in the metropolis where thousands are squandered 
for the delectation of the few ; but in everj neigh- 
borhood where the people are usmg the talent and 
resources they have to make life cheerful. Do not 
sit in your rocking-chair over the register or the 
stove, young woman of the 'New York village or 
farm, dreaming of the glare of gas or the blaze of 
diamonds and the glittering crowd, that you saw 
on your last visit to the town ; but be up and astir 
among the people around you. The same human 
nature can here be developed into a refinement as 



AKT IN NEW YORK. 243 

genuine as that of the capitaL Make your home 
a paradise; stir up your neighbors to pure and 
pleasant enjoyments, and identify your name with 
the growth of a" community in Republican grace 
Do not wait till you have money and position 
there is money and pretension enough in the State 
now; our chief need is a pure, joyous, fearless 
spirit to organize our rich elements of life into the 
most inspiring society of the time. Reject the 
pitiful ambition to push yourself among any circle 
of " select," for before you get there a turn of the 
wheel may disperse the circle and leave you alone 
with your wasted time. But cherish the laudable 
desire to leave the people about you more closely 
united by that respect for each other's manhood 
and womanhood which will blossom into the only 
refinement 'that will abide. 

Our habit of frequent public gathering in con- 
ventions and mass meetings will, by and by, put 
on another feature, and great public holidays 
relieve the monotomy of our life. The agricultu- 
ral fair, the teachers' association, the political mon- 
ster meetings where men, women, children and 
babies come by the acre and sit out the long, 
autumn day in council on the afi*airs of freedom 
are the natural holidays of 'New York ; and few 
sights are more inspiring to a generous taste than 



244 THE STUDIOS ; OK, 

such outpourings of popular enthusiasm and 

Joy- 

'No man, no class is great enough to make society 
in New York ; but the wisest men and women can 
watch its native developments, and help the peo- 
ple realize their best ideas of social existence in 
the pure and refined nnion of an American bro- 
therhood. 

Thus are we led up the various degrees of ascent 
to the summit of Beauty, in a perfect state. For 
the culmination of art is not in painting, or sta- 
tuary, or mnsic, or architecture, or polite society, 
since all these do bnt hint the glory of a social 
order founded on the sentiment of human love. 
The sublimest achievement of man is a state 
wherein nature is wrought into the varied symbol 
of a free humanity ; and every great interest, class 
and profession is harmoniously adjusted ; and the 
commonwealth, poised on everlasting justice, is the 
lively image of the great republic on high. 
Grander work than this was never given to man ; 
to mould ]N'ew York into the commanding force in 
a Christian confederacy of States. In this mighty 
enterprise every inhabitant of our large domain 
becomes a worker elected by God, bound to leave 
on his corner of the majestic fabric the best results 
of character. Tlien whether our lot be cast 



AKT m NEW YOEK. 245 

within tlie circle of professional Art, or range out- 
side in the common area of life, each labors for 
the verdict of ages, beneath the eye of the Great 
Artist who created the world and pronounced it 
good. In snch a calling let each fervent soul count 
it worthy of all devotion to become an image of 
the Divine Loveliness, and shape the commonwealth 
into a sublime figure of the kingdom of God. 



X. 

THE PENITEN'TIARY ; 

OR, 
CKIME IN NEW YORK. 

It is a lasting honor to tlie city of Albany that 
she has chosen one of the healthiest and most 
charming sites npon her lovely range of hills for 
her model Penitentiary. This noble institution 
has been in complete operation ten years, and may 
challenge comparison with any similar establish- 
ment in our country. Notwithstanding the great 
variety in national character among its convicts — 
nearly every civilized country being represented 
in the inmates — and the large number and fre- 
quent changes of its inhabitants, 1,000 persons 
yearly passing under its discipline, many of Avhom 
are committed for a brief period, the success of its 
management has been undoubted. A j^erfect dis- 
cipline is enforced, habits of industry formed, and 
the receipts of the ten years amount to $10,000 

24T 



248 THE PENITENTIAKY ; OR, 

bejond its expenditures. If more decided moral 
results are demanded we must not in justice expect 
them of tlie officers of the Penitentiarj while the 
citizens of Albany permit 3,000 barbarous and 
untaught youth to roam her streets, pouring a 
constant stream of convicts in at its ever gaping 
doors and seething like a pit of j)erdition before 
every discharged criminal. To require the over- 
worked officers of such an institution to reform in 
a month these persons, we have spent twenty 
years in debauching from the paths of virtue, is an 
insult to humanity and common sense. 

The condition of criminal affairs in our own 
city, is a good type of this great state. We have 
the best penitentiary in America, and keep eight 
hundred grog-shops at work on 3,000 youthful 
vagrants, that it may not rot for want of tenants. 
Our State' has a system of criminal jurispru- 
dence and a prison organization, needing only the 
lopping away of here and there a barbaric fea- 
ture, to make it the pride of a civilized community. 
But for want of wholesome prevention of crime 
and of Christian interest in the criminal, our 
laws are not executed, our courts too often 
made a mockery of justice, our State prisons left 
in the hands of partisan politicians, our jails 
and our poor-houses disgracefully neglected, our 



CEISIE IN NEW YOKE. 249 

benevolent and reformatory institutions cliocked 
with occupants, and altogether matters are in a bad 
state and rapidly becoming worse. To arouse the 
minds of the people to their duty on this great 
interest of the prevention and punishment of crime, 
and the Christian discipline of the criminal shall 
be the object of my present address. 

The State of "New York has not been remiss in 
her efforts to solve the question of the punishment 
of crime. The earliest movement for the melioration 
of her criminal code and the establishment of a 
system of prison discipline, was associated with the 
honored names of John Jay, Ambrose Spencer 
and General Schuyler. In 1776, sixteen offences 
were capitally punished by the laws of the State, 
and the Criminal Code was proportionally severe 
in other respects. JSTow, but three crimes are 
capitally punished, and the law in other respects is 
conformable to the growing humanity of the age. 
The first prison which resulted from this early 
movement — " E"ewgate," in the city of 'New York 
— was an imitation of the Pennsylvania system; 
but after repeated experiments in the social and 
solitary modes of discipline, it was reserved for 
Lyndes and Cray to inaugurate that system which 
is now adopted in nineteen States of the Union. 

This method provides for associated, though 

11* 



250 THE PENITENTIARY ; OR, 

silent labor by day, and solitary confinement by 
night, and with sure penalties annexed to disobedi- 
ence, and the aid of religions and literary privi- 
leges on Sundays and evenings of every day. In 
1821, this system went into operation at Auburn, 
in 1825 the State Prison for male, and in 1835 for 
female convicts at Sing Sing, and in 18^5, the 
Clinton prison, were built. New York has also 
the honor of being the first State to establish a 
House of Eefuge for youthful ofi'enders, and an 
Asylum for Idiots. "We *now have three State 
prisons, containing 2,000 convicts ; two Houses of 
Refuge, and three county Penitentiaries, which, 
with our jails and work-houses, contain 4,000 
more. In 1856 there were more than 11,000 con- 
victions for crime in the State. 

We are not prepared to criticise the criminal 
system of our State. From our point of observa- 
tion, excepting its barbarous feature of capital 
punishment for three crimes (one of which was 
never committed, and the other two gaining impu- 
nity every year from the disinclination of the peo- 
ple to infiict their own inhuman penalty), the sys- 
tem appears well contrived and humane. Yet, it 
cannot be denied that, like every other great inter- 
est of humanity in ISTew York, it& working is a sad 
commentary on our Christianity. We are still 



CRIME IN NEW TOEK. 251 

weak enongh to suppose that if a great public 
interest is well organized, it will take care of itself. 
Thus, having established a good system for educat- 
ing the people, and regulating crime, we leave it 
and rush off into the mad pursuit of wealth, and 
are surprised when statistics point to 90,000 unlet- 
tered adult citizens , and the armies of savages in 
our great cities ; and the daily journals teem with 
astounding revelations of crime committed with 
impunity. 

We appoint three Inspectors of State Prisons with 
almost despotic power for good or evil, and then 
permit the political parties to choose political as- 
pirants to this great priesthood of humanity, who 
fill these schools of the State with a transient crowd 
of office seekers. We appoint chaplains and 
teachers and establish libraries in the prisons, but 
by our meagre salaries we bid for inefficiency in 
these sacred offices ; and while the preacher to a 
respectable congregation in 'New York has $5,000 
a year, this great State hires a man to convert the 
congregation at Sing Sing for $500 ; while the 
teachers receive $150, and the libraries are meagre 
and insufficient. We are inexorable on the point 
that the State prisons shall " pay their way," not 
thinking that if these criminals can be reformed it 
will be a gain of manhood as well as money be- 



252 THE PENITEA'TIAEY ; OE, 

yond computation. Our benevolent associations 
that are empowered to elevate the condition of the 
prisoner, languish for want of support, and the em- 
barrassment cast in their way by refractory officials. 
We have sufficient legislation to secure a good con- 
dition of County Jails and Poor-houses, yet I am 
almost ashamed of human nature when I read the 
report of the Legislative committee of Jan. 9th, 
1857, on the disgraceful state of many of these in- 
stitutions. Our Lunatic Asylum is overflowing, 
and humanity demands additional facilities for the 
treatment of insanity and the classification of its 
victims. There is still great injustice committed 
in the imprisonment of witnessess. While the 
people choose the men they often do to administer 
justice, the best organized court and noblest code 
in Christendom will be powerless to protect the 
peace, property and life of the community. And 
let not our executive be made the scape-goat to 
bear the retribution for all this, while the people, as 
represented by their courts and juries, think that 
all these faults can be atoned for by demanding an 
indiscriminate pardon of convicts. 

The cause of this state of anarchy into which 
our criminal affairs is drifting is found in the 
wicked indifference of the masses of our people to 
the whole subject of crime. Yainly will systems 



CEIME IN NEW YOKK. 253 

be devised, while their operation depends on a 
people wlio choose its officers and inspire its spirit 
witli the strangest disregard to Christian reflection. 
A vast majoritj of those who choose judges, legis- 
lators, inspectors, and appoint virtually all the 
officials of justice, neither know what our criminal 
system is, nor concern themselves for its operation. 
Of course this culpable negligence reacts on them- 
selves, and the fearful increase of crime hardens 
the hearts of the people against the criminal. 
There are always men enough ready to stimulate 
the barbarism of the community into a ferocious 
demand for more severe penalties, and a furious 
onslaught against humane ideas of justice. Of all 
sorts of demagogues, we count those among the 
most dangerous who use their position in press, 
pulpit, or official station to exasperate the people 
against the criminal ; urging them to atone for 
their own negligence in the administration of a 
good system by a return to the savage practices of 
a bygone age. We do not need a more severe 
criminal code ; indeed it is already in some points too 
stringent; we need no sudden reorganization of 
our courts, and system of ]Dunishments. But we do 
need a revival of attention among the 600,000 
voters of this State to the whole subject of crime — 
its causes, prevention and discipline — which shall 



254 THE PENITENTIARY ; OR, 

result in filling all positions of this department of 
society with firm, able, hnmane men, who will 
work the machinery according to the intention of 
its founders, and take such measures to protect 
society from the commission of wrong as a Christ- 
ianized people can devise. The most magnifi- 
cently built and rigged ship cannot sail if the tide 
flows out from beneath her keel and leaves her in 
the muddy bottom of the harbor ; the grandest 
system of criminal discipline in a Republic, can 
only float when public opinion runs deej), strong 
and full below it and wafts it to the haven of 
success. 

We have, therefore, no right to impute the pre- 
sent working of our criminal affairs to the failure 
of that system of Humanity which proposes the 
protection of society through the reformation of 
the criminal as the great end. When the people 
have done their duty, it will be time to decide 
whether we shall cease dealing with the criminal 
as a man, and remand him to the conditions of a 
wild beast. We claim that the reformatory method 
of dealing with this fearful problem is the only one 
which will ultimately redeem society. And this 
method is not founded^ as is so often asserted, on 
sympathy with, or even a light view of crime 
itself. 



CRIME IN NEW YORK. 255 

We do not base the demand for reformatory 
treatment of the criminal on a loose, bnt on a strict 
view of his moral condition. It would only be a 
caricature of philanthropy to assert that the offen- 
der is made so entirely by circumstances, and is a 
more unfortunate, not a worse man than his neigh- 
bors. To assert that any large class of men is 
compelled to do wrong by circumstances, is to de- 
clare that the devil, not God, rules on the earth. 
Every soul is provided with a defence against 
temptation ; and the hardest extremity of human 
virtue always opens into the possibility of the 
glorious achievement of martja-dom. When we 
speak of circumstances we must be very uncertain 
who shall be excused on this ground, for it is by 
no means sure that the poor, ignorant and obscure 
are the most dangerously tempted. E'obody lives 
in such a fire of temptation in America, as the 
man chosen by thirty-two States to stand for four 
years as the Eepresentative of the Republic. The 
richest man in every town, the ablest man in 
every State, is beset with such fiends as make his 
position not enviable even when compared with 
the poorest man that lives upon his bounty. 
Every soul has its forty days in the wilderness, 
and in some way Satan has a tug at the heart- 
strino^s of each one of us. And to everv child of 



256 THE PENITENTIARY ; OR, 

God is given the power to resist the uttermost as- 
saults of evil while reason and responsibility last. 
We propose no such fallacy as that of excusing 
any man for sin under the plea of his circum- 
stances. We should doubtless endeavor to make 
the circumstances of all men more favorable to 
virtue ; the higher as well as lower classes 
of society need deliverance from their unfavorable 
surroundings. God alone can measure the guilt 
of each spirit. We are to assume that every man 
who does wrong has violated his holy law, and act 
accordingly. 

Bat here is our mistake : thai willful transgres- 
sion demands vindictive 'punislvntient. Nothing of 
the kind is authorized in our dealing with our fel- 
low creatures. Every crime deserves at our 
hands, not revenge either for restitution or exam- 
ple, but discipline for the reformation of the offen- 
der. We deal with the criminal not as the final 
umpire on his fate — that is God's vocation — but to 
restore him to virtue. Thus only can we perform 
our duty to him or society. For society demands 
not the protection that comes from killing or 
caorhioj a dano^erous animal, but that which comes 
from the restoration of one of her members w^ho has 
fallen out of his place. The criminal needs not 
punishment to embitter his lot ; God will give him 



I 



CKIME IN NEW YORK. 25? 

a pain of conscience amply sufficient for his powers 
of endurance ; lie needs the fatherly hand of society 
laid on him for wholesome restraint ; needs to be 
sequestered from the scene of his old temptations 
and crimes and taught by deprivation of accus- 
tomed social privileges, by constant industry, by 
reflection, aided by the counsels of good men and 
good books, how far he has strayed from his obli- 
gation ; if necessary, needs the whole moral force 
of society concentrated for his reformation. 

The State cannot aiford to lose a man ; each soul 
is a vital individual in her brotherhood ; and when 
one does fall away, it may well leave the ninety 
and nine and go out to seek for the lost one. If 
there be joy in heaven over one sinner that re- 
penteth ; if God is willing to adjust the whole 
moral universe to promote the restoration of the 
vilest offender; should not the State consider it 
the noblest exercise of its majesty to bring forth 
every agency for the conversion of its worst crim- 
inal, and never be wearied of efforts to bring him 
home to truth and rectitude ? "What a spectacle, 
should the world's chief Republic confess that it 
could not reform its own criminals ; but must kill 
some, and ostracize all from the Christian sympa- 
thies of the people ! Would not such a state of 
society be a failure when it could not convert one 



258 THE PENITENTIARY ; OK, 

murderer, but would be obliged to put Mm out of 
the way ? Shall we be content to lose 11,000 men, 
women and children a year from their posts of 
service in the State ? Can we afford such a waste 
of manhood and womanhood ? Oh, let us arouse 
from our wicked chase for a material success, and 
save our brethren for themselves, for society, for 
the cause of Liberty and civilization. Only the 
Reformatory system will do all these things ; and 
to allege it will not, is a libel on Christianity. 

I know all the respectable sophistry by which 
this method of dealing with crime is opposed. We 
are charged with nourishing a sympathy for the 
criminal at the expense of sympathy for the victim 
of his act, and society. Well, pray, with whom 
should we symj)athize, if not with the criminal? 
Did God send Jesus Christ to call the righteous or 
sinners to repentance ? Methinks a man needs our 
love in proportion as he is fallen from rectitude : 
needs it to arrest that despair which urges him to 
frantic excess of crime ; to arouse hope ; to evoke 
the latent vigor of his soul; to assure him first 
that man is still his brother, and will not let him 
go ; then, that God is his Father and still pleads 
with him for repentance ; to recall his self-respect 
and convince him that he can yet be a man. Is 
any one ashamed to bestow sympathy on a fallen 



CRIME IN NEW YOKK. 259 

man? Then lie is ashamed of that which made 
Jesus the Saviour of mankind. Does any man 
fear he shall be accused of sympathy for crime if 
he indulges in love and service for the criminal ? 
Jesus was called the " friend of publicans and 
sinners ;" and there are Pharisees to-day, who love 
to taunt every philanthropic man with the same 
charge ; but between Phariseeism and Christianity 
we should not be slow to choose. N'one should 
know better than those who utter this calumny, 
that we do not justify crime while we love and 
toil to save the criminal ; and it is time such mis- 
representation of Divine Charity should find its 
native home in the " Satanic Press " and not dis- 
turb the regions of respectable society in a Christ- 
ian Republic. 

Sympathy with the sufferer ? Why, we suppose 
the best sympathy we can show to an injured man, is 
to help him reform his enemy. If he demands our 
help to revenge himself on a criminal, we as Christ- 
ian believers must decline. Examj)le? Why, what 
example are we bound to set before society : that 
of rendering vindictive punishment for crime, and 
thus compelling ourselves to become more barba- 
rous for every offence of the man we punish, or the 
example of taking possession of every offender to 
make him a good man, and becoming ourselves 



260 THE PENITENTIARY ; OR, 

more Cliristian for eveiy sin he commits ? Doubt- 
less there may be a dangerous lenience, but it is 
nsuallj the reaction from an oyerstrained severity. 
Let society insist on the punishment of death, and 
all good men will be tempted to let the murderer 
go ; jury, judge, attorney, governor, populace, will 
be forced into a dangerous sympathy with the 
criminal, to vindicate our common humanity. 
Let society set herself to the glorious task of 
redeeming her outcasts, and all good men will con- 
spire in every just method of restraint which will 
contribute to this end. Let us put away this 
unchristian hatred against the criminal, and apply 
ourselves to the Christian duty of recalling these 
estrays from society, to their renounced fellow- 
ship with man and thei repudiated obedience to 
God. 

The first obligation, in this department of duty, 
is the Prevention of Crime ; and the most impor- 
tant ; since only by drying the fountain, can the 
poisonous stream be arrested. The most efficient 
agency in this work of prevention is the support 
of all those public and private means of improve- 
ment which make a Christian society. If you 
would prevent crime, teach your children to love 
industry and honesty in business. Idleness, and a 
habit of dishonesty in trade, are a fruitful source 



CRIME IN NEW YORK. 261 

of offence. Every young man or woman sent into 
our Eepublican society too unskillful or too proud 
to obtain an honest living by hard labor of bands 
or mind, or too selfish to respect the rights of 
others in getting it, is at the mercy of the tempter. 
Education is a great safeguard against crime, 
especially if it be a true education, which develops 
all the powers of our humanity into a harmonious 
manhood, rather than sharpens the intellect at the 
expense of the soul. It costs $2 25 a week to sup- 
port a convict in a jail in 'New York; and we can 
so administer our public schools that for $10 a 
year, every child in the State can be raised beyond 
the temptation of ignorance. 

The family is the great school where children 
are fitted for honor or dishonor. Many a child in 
good society is systematically trained to be a vil- 
lain by parents who weakly and wickedly indulge 
its w^hims, pamper its appetites and turn it loose, 
an organized willfulness, upon the world. The 
ambition and luxury of fashionable life tempt 
thousands to crimes of the deadliest nature ; indeed 
much that is winked at in the ordinary course of 
fashionable society, is itself as culpable as ofi'ences 
that send their perpetrators to a prison. Art and 
amusements inwrought into the texture of society 
are a safeguard. A hundred youth are driven to 



262 THE PENITENTIARY ; OR, 

wickedness by the ennui and monotony of our 
barren social American existence, where one falls 
through the temptations of such amusements as we 
now have ; and would Christian people cease their 
fruitless crusade against the recreations of society 
and attempt their reform:ilIon, we might hope for 
better things. 

But especially will education in that radical love 
of God and man, which is Christianity, insure us 
against public immorality ; for, if anything is 
demonstrated, it is that respectability and superfi ■ 
cial moral propriety are no reliable defence against 
the surges of evil desire. Every man does the 
most for the truth by living a holy life in his ordi- 
nary sphere of duty ; and every noble character is a 
constant protest and preventive against crime. 

"We have the right also to control tliose peculiar 
causes of offence which exist especially in densely 
populated communities. Blessed be the labors of 
those who gather together the orj)hans, the child- 
ren of the street, the sorely tempted, the poor and 
the outcast into the fold of a Christian Charity. 
They are the true architects of society, restoring 
its fallen members to an honorable place in its 
harmonies. We may also lay our hand on such 
causes of public immorality as pander to the worst 
passions of men. I doubt that intempei-ance in 



CHIME IN NEW YORK. 263 

intoxicating drinks is so large a source of crime as 
is alleged. Drunkenness itself, is commonly the 
result of a long deterioration of vitality in the will. 
The real cause of crime is a weakening of moral 
decision, which is the gradual result of a thousand 
influences. When this disease of moral enervation 
has reached a certain point, it leaves the victim 
open to the assaults of sensual passions and habits 
which doubtless react and hasten his descent to 
ruin. Still, Intemperance is a curse of such potent 
force, that the State may well overstrain, rather 
than fail to assert her powers in its suppression. 
Yet the only test of sumptuary laws is the proba- 
bility of their enforcement, l^ot what corresponds 
to a preconceived theory of prohibition, but 
what can be thoroughly enforced, is the thing to 
be incorporated into a law. The failure of our 
legislation against intemperance, we believe, has 
been the result of its narrowness. We must 
include vagrant pauperism, sensuality and drunk- 
enness in any system of legislation for the preven- 
tion of crime. Hitherto, we have separated these 
branches of the same tree, and our success has 
been doubtful. When a deeper philosophy comes 
into the consideration of that w^hole side of life 
given over to the debasement of man through his 
senses, ^ve may be guided to a method which will 



264 



save the sinner and protect the State. We suspect 
that Reformatory Asjhims for the victims of the 
cup and the brothel are to figure largely in this 
system. 

Every influence that unites the several interests 
and classes of society is a preventive of crime. 
The present tendency that threatens to ostracize 
the great E'orth American, Asiatic and African 
races from all participation in the rights of Ameri- 
can citizenship, will turn out a premium on disor- 
der. Every class in this republic thrust outside 
the common privilege of freedom, will finally 
become a criminal class. Degraded as may be the 
emigrant that seeks our shores, or the servant that 
crouches beneath our power at home, our only 
safety is in educating them to the rights and rank 
of freemen. 

Thus by fidelity to the culture of the community, 
by the wise management of the most obvious 
causes of oflfence, by patriotic union of all classes 
in the hopes and duties of a common civiliza- 
tion, may we greatly prevent the approaches of 
crime. 

But while the human will remains free, our 
utmost efifort at the prevention of crime will not 
insure its extirpation ; and there seems little hope 
that our people will be suddenly awakened to their 



CRIME IN NEW YOKK. 265 

duties in this respect. We shall doubtless not lack 
for criminals, these many years, in 'New York. 
Let us consider our obligations to them. 

The first and most imperative duty is to choose 
competent men to manage our existing system of 
criminal affairs. Let us apply our minds to ascer- 
tain just what our system can accomplish under a 
worthy administration. The greatest good that 
could happen would be the utter disconnection of 
our wdiole judicial and punitive system from parti- 
san politics. While men are looking to seats in 
our halls of justice, and promotion to the respon- 
sible ofiices in our reformatory institutions, as a 
reward for caucus services, it is almost vain to hope 
that any system, however admirable, will be well 
administered. Woe to that State whose courts, 
police and prisons, are swayed to and fro by the 
fierce waves of political change. Yet the tendency 
seems a growing one, to regard all the officers in a 
republic as advocates of a victorious party. We 
believe the people will be driven by sheer necessity 
and common sense from the dangerous tendency 
into which they are now hurried by ambitious 
leaders. We anticipate a revival of wisdom, which 
shall insist, first of all, on competency, in every 
candidate for a position connected with our crimi- 
nal affairs. Let us fill every judicial seat and 

12 



266 THE PENITENTIARY ; OE, 

every post down to the lowest official in jail and 
police, with a man of first rate integrity and 
undoubted capacity; pay well for services done, 
and be inexorable against neglect or abuse of the 
position. We may seem to many to be pleading 
in behalf of the millennium, when we demand 
such behavior from the sovereign people ; but it 
is only by demanding it, and persuading or sham- 
ing the voters of I^ew York into such a reasonable 
course, that there is any hope of the perpetuity of 
our society. Whoever tampers with the integrity 
of courts, or makes the administration of justice 
dependent on partisan favoritism, is knocking 
away the very foundations of social order, and 
doing his best to precipitate us all into the bottom- 
less pit of anarchy. The people of J^ew York have 
the alternative of choosing honest and competent 
managers of their criminal system, or of submitting 
to the organization of all decent men into a " "Vigi- 
lance Committee," for the protection of life and 
property. Let them learn betimes, and insist that 
the method now on the ground shall have a fail* 
administration. 

"When the court has performed its high obliga- 
tion, and the criminal passes out of society within 
the walls of the prison, let him feel that he has not 
entered a chamber of torture where the Empire 



CKIME IN NEW YOKK. 267 

State of the American Union wreaks its vengeance 
on Lis defenceless head ; but rather a seminary, 
where the chief Republic of the world is not 
ashamed to become his father and mother and 
train him again in all the ways that lead to hon- 
orable manhood. Let the officials with whom he 
comes in contact, not aj)pear so much the grim 
executioners of a despotic law, as the firm and 
humane representatives of a Christian Common- 
wealth that deplores the apostasy of her child, and 
will spare no pains to guide him into the ways of 
penitence and peace. Let him receive the comforts 
of life with none of its superfluities ; for he who 
would reflect deeply on his duty should waste no 
time or thought on the indulgence of the senses. The 
first element of reformation is the establishment of 
a habit of industry, and the State does wisely that 
teaches every convict the preliminary lesson of 
labor in some necessary occupation. But to make 
a criminal's life all toil, is to degrade him to a 
machine and destroy the hope of his restoration to 
manhood. Tlierefore the industrial life of the con- 
vict should be only the basis on which should be 
reared a superstructure of Christian training. Let 
the wisest teachers divert his mind from the insane 
intensity of criminal meditation to the contempla- 
tion of truth. Let him be won to study and 



268 THE PENITENTIARY ; OK, 

tliouglit ; and the mental training of tlie prison 
not be a mere recreation of the imagination, bnt a 
stimulus that shall arouse long slumbering energies 
and direct the intellect aright. And let religion 
appear, not in the shape of a frowning superstition, 
threatening the wretch with tortures and stripes in 
eternity, but as the father running to meet the 
prodigal while yet a great way off, and bathing his 
head with tears of holy joy. Let woman be greatly 
employed in all those offices that touch on sj)iritual 
discipline ; for a pure and holy woman will often 
find a depth of repentant feeling in the soul of the 
outcast which would remain forever locked against 
the presence of man. And let the whole discipline 
of the Penitentiary resemble God's discipline of his 
creatures. As the offender rejects the proffered 
aid, let him behold society fading off from him, 
and his stone walls closing more firmly about his 
earthly life. As he accepts the offers of Christian 
discipline let a new light be cast on his path with 
every effort towards goodness. Thus may he be 
made by the State, as by God, in a measure the 
arbiter of his own destiny, and become an active 
partner in the exalted work of his own redemp- 
tion. 

And when, at last, his prison door opens and he 
stands again before the society he has offended, let 



CRIME IN NEW YOKE. 269 

him be met by those who will still be to him the 
representatives of a Christian brotherhood. 'No man 
should be permitted to fall a second time for lack 
of an arm to gnide him away from scenes of old 
temptation. Here is a field that opens a wide 
sphere of nsefulness to the benevolent heart. Oh, 
that thousands of the gifted and aspiring of our 
State might be made to feel that here they can 
serve their country more effectually than elsewhere. 
What are the joys of social applause, of literary 
reputation, of respectable j)osition, compared with 
the heavenly consciousness of having met one man 
at the prison door and been his guardian angel 
back to the final trust and respect of his fellow 
men? Who will complain of "nothing to do" 
when 11,000 of our fellow beings yearly issue from 
the reformatory institutions of this State, each one 
a subject for Christian sympathy and influence? 
Thus, by a wise administration of a good system — 
the conversion of the prison into a convict's 
school, and of society into his instructor — we may 
solve this fearful problem according to the lights 
of Christianity. 

But there is one class of criminals who are placed 
by our law outside this system of reformation. 
While the State sustains the attitude of a Christian 
missionary to the vast majority of her erring 



2T0 THE penitentiary; ok, 

children, it still, in violation of her radical sys- 
tem, remains a pagan executioner towards those 
convicted of three capital crimes. Kothing so re- 
minds ns of the mingled barbarity and vacillating 
weakness of an Oriental tyi-anny, as the position 
of the State before the murderer. It claims the 
right to punish without mercy, but all the while 
is shaken with human doubts and relentings, the 
result of which is, that at some stage of the pro- 
ceedings, between policeman and high sheriff, a 
majority of the worst criminals slip through the 
meshes of the law and go " unwhipped of justice." 
Those who protest so sternly against this state of 
affairs should remember that it is not so easy for a 
Governor of Xew Tork to change himself from a 
Christian gentleman to a pagan Brutus as they 
may imagine; and that to secure the invincible 
sternness they demand, they must go back at least 
five hundred years to an age of iron vindictiveness 
and bloodshed. This lenience of society is the 
universal protest against the law ; and if the statute 
still threatens death, it will increase till conviction 
will be impossible, and tlie murderer become a 
licensed character. ^SVhy do we not learn wisdom 
of our past failures and repeal a law which now is 
a premium on the last extremity of crime ? 

It is to be hoped the time has passed when the 



CRIME m NEW YOEK. 271 

religions public will feel called upon to resist this 
greatly needed reform. We do not question the 
honesty of many religious people in obstructing 
this change, but we regard their view a supersti- 
tion none the less dangerous for being the result of 
an honest conviction. It is time the Bible should 
be rescued from that interpretation which makes 
it the corner-stone of the gallows. The common 
sense of the whole scriptural argument is: — that 
the Hebrew IN'ation, like every other Asiatic peo- 
ple, claimed God Almighty as the author of their 
code of laws ; and like every other Oriental nation, 
lived in the commission of slavery, polygamy, 
exterminating war and the punishment of death 
for crime. If the practice of the Jewish people is 
authority for capital punishment to-day, in l^ew^ 
York, it is equally authority for slavery in South 
Carolina, for polygamy in Utah, for even more 
fierce wars of extermination than have yet been 
waged by our most savage backwoods soldiery 
against the pagan Indians. . IS[o man can logically 
defend the gallows from the Old Testament, while 
he rejects its testimony to these other ancient insti- 
tutions. The way out of this difficulty, is to inter- 
pret the Old Testament according to reason and 
Christianity, and to regard the Hebrew people as 
a barbarous nation, living 3,000 years ago in Asia, 



272 THE penitentiary; ok, 

whose customs, laws, ideas and practices have 
passed away into history, superseded by that 
better light of Christian, love, under which only a 
Republic can exist. There is not a word, an act, 
an idea in the life of Jesus ; there is not a princi- 
ple of Christianity as he proclaimed it, that 
upholds the gallows. Christianity is the love of 
God and man ; and by no possible arrangement of 
the law of Love can you deduce the halter and the 
executioner. If man has the right to deprive his 
fellow man of life at all, it can only be in the last 
extremity of self-defence, of himself or society; and 
to affirm that society in the Empire State is in immi- 
nent danger from the presence of a few murderers 
under Christian discipline in her prisons, is an 
assertion too puerile to need refutation. Even if 
the abolition of the death penalty for a time 
seemed to encourage crime, it would only prove 
that society was too indolent to do its duty by the 
convict, not that humanity was a failure. But the 
testimony is all on the side of mercy. Every 
melioration of the criminal code under favorable 
circumstances has increased the security of life, 
and the safest condition of society is not now that 
where the criminal code is most unrelenting, but 
that in which death is a punishment never or most 
rarely known to the law. 



CRIME IN NEW YORK. 273 

Every plea for tlie retention of the gallows 
resolves itself into a plea for moral inaction. 'No- 
body doubts it is easier for the people of this State 
to hire a hangman to put a criminal out of the 
world than to concentrate the moral forces of the 
commonwealth for his reformation ; but God will 
call us to a strict account for every man we thus 
destroy to save ourselves the trouble of his conver- 
sion. Are there not spiritual resources in this 
mighty Republic to reach the soul of any murderer 
in your domain ? If not, let us hold a day of fast- 
ing and prayer, and implore God to revive our 
religion again and again, till it is strong enough to 
grapple with these outcast ones and melt them by 
the power of love into penitence and reconciliation 
to heaven and man. 

Meanwhile, no service to our State is so valuable 
as labor directed to the reformation of the thou- 
sands of youth who are growing up in our cities 
and towns in an apprenticeship to misery, ignor- 
ance and vice. The report of the Albany Peniten- 
tiary for 1856, declares that no less than 2,000 
such youth roam the streets of our ancient city, 
and we know the depths of youthful depravity that 
fester in every large community in our State. 
Oh, let us be ashamed to call ourselves a Christian 
State, while these heathen rise up to mock our 
12* 



274 THE PENITENTIART ; OR, 

pretence ! Men and women of wealth and culture ; 
young men and women whom I beliold all about 
me, slowly perishing with ennui and social formal- 
ity ; ministers of Christ, professors of Christianity ; 
jDCople who only claim the reputation of common 
humanity; what are we doing for our heathen? 
Oh, fearful will be om* retribution if we permit 
these youth to go on their gloomy way to crime 
and earthly ruin ! Let us awake to our obligation 
to these, our perishing brothers and sisters ! Let 
us all turn preachers in word and life, that society 
may be rescued from this moral scrofula in her 
blood; that every erring spirit may hear the 
tidings of salvation ; be saved for himself, saved 
for the State, saved for citizenship in that Kingdom 
of Heaven, which will come when all men love 
God as the father, and the neighbor as them- 
selves. 



XI. 
WOMAN IIST AMERICA. 

OuE consideration of civilization would be in- 
complete without a chapter on Woman in America, 
What is the present condition, the true culture, the 
right position of woman in our Republican society ? 

America has no national type of female character 
and society. The American woman dwells in a 
nation that has not yet enjoyed a century of char- 
acteristic existence ; indeed the present generation 
is the first that has lived in a self-conscious 
America. Ten millions of American women are 
let loose over an area of three millions of square 
miles to help ten millions of men and eight mil- 
lions of children create a Republican society. 
From these women restraint is removed as in no 
former period of the world's history. Freedom, in 
its widest and best significance, is dawning upon 
woman in our land, and she cannot fail to be influ- 
enced in her whole existence by her novel posi- 
tion. 

2T6 



276 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

To say that the American woman fully appre- 
ciates this glorious opportunity, much less acts 
worthy of her position, would be to affirm her the 
angel she is only in the poetaster's and story-teller's 
columns of the monthly magazines. With the same 
human nature that played false with Mother Eve, 
she is here called to realize a grander fact than 
ever before existed — a Eepublican society. It is no 
slander to say she has not yet realized it, but is 
enslaved in sight of her boundless opportunity. 
The material advantages of freedom are always 
appropriated before men rise to its spiritual appli- 
cai^ions. If our young men too often differ from 
the young men of other countries, rather in their 
abuse, than appreciation of their social freedom, so, 
as far as our young women are American, do they 
to an equal extent exemplify the lower rather than 
the higher traits of the national character. Thus 
while everybody knows many fine women, nobody 
has found a fine republican neighborhood or a 
satisfactory state of social life. 

American women are, just now, bewildered by 
their own position. The great mixture of people 
in cities and large towns, where customs and fash- 
ions originate, divides the mass into a thousand 
contradictory elements. Society is an uncertain 
fluctuating ocean, on whose shore every girl stands 



WOMAN IN AMEEICA. 277 

watching her opportunity to spring aboard the 
finest craft that is whirled within her reach. 

During this formative period of social life, the 
material advantages of our condition have a fatal 
fascination to our young country women. There 
was never a race of men acquiring wealth and 
position so fast as the young men of America ; so 
every farmer's, mechanic's or merchant's daughter ; 
every girl at her needle, her studies, her school- 
teacher's desk, has a mighty temptation to keep 
the brightest corner of her best eye open for the 
coming man, who shall appear in his coach at her 
mother's door, carry her to a beautiful home, and 
bear her on from triumph to triumph in her social 
career. Honor to those who fix their eyes on 
the higher spiritual prizes of American freedom, 
and live out the resolve to found their success on 
something better than money and ease ; but they 
are the chosen few. The crowd of American girls 
do what women would do everywhere; neglect 
the higher culture of the soul in the scheming or 
waiting for the sensual advantages of life, and spend 
the golden years of their first quarter of a century, 
rather in superficial occupations and inquiring 
after desirable husbands, than in toiling to become 
good wives and Eepublican mothers. 

Tliis fearful push for the material prizes of our 



278 WOMAN IN AMEBIC A. 

national life, explains the imperfect education of 
American joung women. Mothers and daughters 
vie in the cultivation of those temporary graces 
and accomplishments which are supposed to bring 
young men to a crisis in the affections, while the 
solid qualities which can alone retain the love of a 
rational man, or fit a woman for genuine success, 
are postponed till life is uj^on them. It also 
accounts for the ridiculous imitation of foreign 
fashions, which makes Boston a sham London, 
and 'New York a sham Paris, and arrays the girls 
of every western town in obedience to the fash- 
ion plates of Godey and Harper. It is the 
chief cause of the restlessness of women, and the 
want of peace in family and social life ; for young 
women who are crazed with this ambition, cannot 
be quiet enough to develop that sweetness and 
strength, which is the rock at the centre of earthly 
life, and next to God's love, the best support of 
man. And this is the secret cause of the fearful 
collapse of female health in America ; for standing 
on tiptoe, watching the chance to leap aboard a 
fairy, floating palace that wavers over a stormy sea, 
is not a healthy, though an exciting occupation. 
It forces children through the grades of girlhood 
with steam power rapidity to young ladyhood, 
while they should be romping in pantalets, learning 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 279 

science or household duties under their teachers 
and mothers. This rush of energy to the surface 
of life, the excitements, hopes and fears of the 
young lady's career, leave the deep places of the 
heart dry, and create a morbid restlessness of the 
affections, that preys upon the very springs of phy- 
sical existence ; so the majority of American girls, 
when they have obtained their lover, are not physi- 
cally fit to become his wife and the mother of his 
children, and the bright path of girlhood dips 
down into the valley of shadows, that married life 
is to woman in thousands of American homes. 

This material ambition of the girls drives their 
companions of the other sex into overheated exer- 
tions in business and exhausts their health and 
freshness, by awakening at one-and-twenty the 
sense of obligation belonging to forty ; while their 
ill-health and practical effeminacy prevent thou- 
sands of young men from marrying, and thus fear- 
fully increase the sensuality of the community. It 
drives the young couple to live beyond their means 
and sacrifice constant comfort and true family life 
to occasional splendor and periodical excitement. 
American men wear out in business keeping up 
the household, and women wear out in straining 
after social position. Children are born with the 
mark of this career upon them, and brought up 



280 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

in a more exaggerated style. The mother at last- 
'•' breaks down " under social cares, and distrac- 
tions, and the father has no spot of rest on earth. 
The American woman has not yet created the 
American home. As a nation we are jaded, sad, 
nervous. Our men do not come out of theii* fine 
houses with the glory of the Lord shining in their 
faces, as Moses came down from the mount, but 
as tired and restless as they went in. The Repub- 
lican home that shall cheer, console, and elevate 
the American people, and the Republican Society 
that is but its extension and idealization, are yet a 
vision. 

Such is now the condition of woman in America, 
swayed to a dangerous extent by the temptations 
of the material side of Republicanism ; and it 
becomes every wise man to drop that stjie of 
spread-eagle gallantry, with the Jonathonian 
order of rhetoric, which yet further inflames the 
sensualism of the people by false compliments, and 
speak severely of the faults of the American woman 
as he would invite her to a like criticism, in faith 
that she will respond to every true effort to raise 
her to the central power of the world's only Repub- 
lican Society. 

Already does this response begin to be heard. 
There is another tendency among American 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 281 

women, equally characteristic of tlieir i^osition and 
prophetic of the largest results. This tendency 
may be called " the woman's moYement," includ- 
ing in the term the whole of that new interest in 
the elevation of the sex, which is now one of 
the most striking phenomena of the time. 

"Whoever travels among our people and listens to 
the talk of all classes, feels himself in the presence 
of a mighty inspiration of our national idea of 
Christian Freedom ; an aspiration after a freer and 
wider life, and imjDatience with the present re- 
straints and weaknesses of the sex — a blind impulse 
to do something more Republican than is now 
being done. This feeling, like all popular senti- 
ments, reveals itself according to the character 
and circumstances of those it animates. In some 
isolated circles of pedantic cnlture, in many homes 
sunk in materialism, in the saloons of selfish and 
sensual fashion, it hardly lives at all ; though even 
here a rousing blast from outside now and then 
slams an open door, or rattles the window shutters 
with portentous meaning. But in a thousand 
homes it prompts the serious inquiry into habits of 
living, economy, diet, dress, education, amnsements, 
social ideas, and though such discussions are often 
but a tea-table vapor, their resnlt is generally per- 
ceptible in the disuse of injurious customs, and the 



282 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

beginning of more rational family life. The fire 
gets into the maiden's sonl, and she grows restive 
under the round of inanity that the fashionable 
courteously call " life." 'Now and then one suc- 
ceeds in a new sphere and finds in a laborious 
independence, joys she never knew in a comforta- 
ble dependence. It sets people talking on mar- 
riage, and asking why, with such a liberty of 
choice, so many American women should be badly 
mated; and if such investigations now and then 
tip over a weak brother and sister into the gutter 
of free love, we cannot wonder that in a commu- 
nity where every other girl marries for something 
else than aifection, there should arise an army 
who clamor for the free indulgence of the ap- 
petites. The school education of girls is being 
discussed with a vigor and breadth that promises 
the best results ; the college is changing from 
a monastic cloister, where men study Latin and 
Greek, to a Republican University, where men 
and women vie in the beautiful emulation for the 
knowledge that maketh wise for life. Teaching 
in the school and church is fast becoming the spe- 
cial province of woman, and the press and art are 
free to all who come. The question of female 
labor is fairly before the people. Several profes- 
sions are wholly or partly opened for the sex. 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 283 

authorship is entirely free. Medicine is losing its 
masculine conceit. The lecture platform is open 
for any woman strong enough to face an audience 
and not be scared into a man ; and the pulpit opens 
its reluctant door to a few eloquent female preach- 
ers. Woman is finding a wide and welcome sphere 
of activity in the various benevolent operations of 
the day, and the church would fall unless she held 
it up. Wherever a dozen young women are gathered 
together, we find some earnest soul asking what it 
shall do to be saved from the low contact of popular 
American life. K in many instances this longing 
begins with a chat and expires in a sigh, in many 
others it feeds a secret purpose that sooner or later 
ripens to a will and becomes a fact before the world. 
Among the more radical class of minds this spirit 
has wrought more decisively, and driven thousands 
of intelligent men and women into public protest 
against the whole structure of society. These per- 
sons boldly affirm the equality of woman and man, 
in power, right and position. This demand thej 
enforce with great vigor and ingenuity of reason- 
ing, a fearful array of facts, and a scathing criti- 
cism of the present state of American society. We 
must not look to them for cleai-ly defined ideas of 
woman's nature, or a philosophical estimate of her 
life ; for most of them have been driven into their 



284 WOMAN IN AiMEKICA. 

position by personal experience of, or a qnick sym- 
pathy with, woman's wrongs; and pathetic and 
stirring as are their appeals, they are not self-con- 
sistent, mnch less do they agree with each other. 
But the conventions in which this development 
culminates, are distinguished for great ability, 
decorum, and power over popular sentiment ; are 
least of a bore of any species of public conventions, 
because filled with live people. Every theory and 
vagary gets an airing on their platform, but after a 
liberal subtraction for nonsense and bad logic, a 
great mass of facts and argument remains that has 
never been answered, and on which only the next 
century of woman's career in America can be the 
commentary. The upshot of all this is, that we are 
bound to try the experiment of Democracy in 
America, and woman will have her part in the 
crusade ; and those agitators who take the stump 
in favor of the millennium, are only doing in their 
way what every true man and woman in the land 
is doing in another. In contemplating this great 
movement we do not need so much a caricature ot 
the foolish side of woman's conventions, or the 
exploding of rainbow social theories that will dis- 
solve into their elemental suds at the first collision 
with real life, as a true and bold statement, by 
every man and woman who thinks at all, of what 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 285 

that mind lias been able to believe on a great and 
complicated movement, wbicli, after all, will turn 
ont not according to our predictions but according 
to providential laws. 

Every discussion of human rights presupposes a 
discussion of human capacities. Before we de- 
scribe the path to true American womanhood let 
us give our best estimate of woman's nature ; re- 
membering that the nature of man and woman are 
so involved in each other, and both in God, that all 
attempts at description should be made with pro- 
found reverence, and held as a mere hint at a yet 
unfathomed mystery. 

It must be that the human race, from the crea- 
tion till this day, has not been deceived in ascribing 
superior energy of the affections to woman. In 
her, love is less mixed with passion, ambition or 
selfishness of any form than in man. The affection 
of few women is free from degrading weakness 
and instability, but even the perverted form in 
which it appears, testifies to the divine power 
lodged in every female soul. The development 
and the purification of the sentiments is the reward 
of all womanly culture. She is not paid for her 
hard toils and secret tears by outward advantages, 
but by gaining new capacity to love, and conse- 
quently to rule the world. In its noblest exercise. 



286 WOMAN IN AilERICA. 

her affection penetrates to tlie possibilities of its 
object ; beholds the germs of its life and the latent 
energies of its being, and declares not so much 
what it will be in this world, as what it can be- 
come in the vast revolutions of its eternal career. 
"Woman's true love does ii<»t exaggerate its object; 
it is the only true estimate of its greatness of ca- 
pacity. Like the divine love it annihilates time, 
space, and circumstances, and looking along the 
vast reach of the soul's achievements, loves and 
waits in patience the time of realization. Shak- 
speare, beyond all men, has shown this in the far- 
seeing celestial calmness of Desdemona. To this 
angelic woman the tempest of offended honor in 
her Othello's breast is but a hurricane, blowing 
them both through the waves of this stormy life 
into the peaceful deeps of the life beyond; and 
she dies by his angry hands, knowing his soul can 
have no rest till it finds her beyond the grave, and 
welcomes her. with a love too great for new distur- 
bance. The ideal affection of woman is the best 
representative of the divine love to man. 

We are not prepared to assert that woman is in- 
ferior to man in imagination. Imagination is the 
power whereby the soul penetrates to the essential 
nature of existence and prophesies its perfect de- 
velopment. And this is woman's strong ground. 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 287 

True, she has not written poems, painted and 
carved, created music and architecture like man ; 
but she constantly does what is a more vital act of 
imagination : comprehends the secrets of the liv- 
ing soul, and moulds it into manhood and woman- 
hood ; creates the home, manners, amusements, so- 
cial life, and through these, civilization. Her 
imagination i& so vital, tha.t it scorns imitation and 
drives at once to real existence, and there wins its 
lasting triumphs, of which art is but the record. 
There is more intense and constructive imagination 
shown by many a village mother in comprehend- 
ing the natures of her children, and rearing them 
up without collision, into worthy men and women, 
than in writing poems or carving statues. Wo- 
man idealizes nature and spirit, and by her power 
thus to behold things as they were created to be, 
does she mould the world into constantly increas- 
ing forms of beauty and excellence. 

Whether woman is equal to man in intellect, by 
which we mean the whole region of the higher 
reason, and the understanding, logical and practi- 
cal, united in common sense, we cannot say. Cer- 
tainly, in quickness of apprehension, in the percep- 
tion of nice distinctions, in tact, in practical judg- 
ment, within a limited sphere, and generally in a 
common sense estimate of what is best to be done 



288 WOMAN IN AMEEICA. 

under any given complication of circnmstances, she 
is the superior to man. But in that comj^rehensive- 
ness of mental view, which overlooks vast interests 
in their entire relations, and in that sublime ener- 
gy of pure reason, whereby nature and life are 
seen in their scientific correctness, and the laws 
discovered by which God rules his creation, she 
has not yet shown herself his equal.-^ Here is the 
strong ground of man, and when truly himself, 
woman naturally looks iipward to him as a supe- 
rior intelligence. 

Man is also the superior of woman in force of 
executive will. He possesses that restless energy, 
courage and consistency of purpose w^hereby he 
overruns the visible world, subdues nature, founds 
states, governments, institutions and civilizations. 
His physical being and the coarser texture of his 
mind qualify him for such a career. But when we 
go inward, and deal with more spiritual affairs, wo- 
man's will excels man as eminently as it falls 
below in the outward world. Before her incredi- 
ble patience, her life-long endurance, her power of 
concentration and persistence of purpose, man 
hides his face and submits to be led by her irre- 
sistible force of will. That will despises out- 
ward triumphs, that it may the more effectually 
rally in its fullness of spiritual energy around 



WOMAN IN AMEEICA. 289 

those critical spots that determine human des- 
tiny. 

Yet, whatever natural inferiorities woman suf- 
fers, are overbalanced by the superior fineness of 
her organization ; all her powers are more ethereal 
than those of her companion. She, therefore, sits 
at the centre of life, and does through agents what 
man is compelled to run about the earth and ac 
complish by the sweat of his brow. She is the 
equal, perhaps the superior, of man in entire force 
of being ; is perhaps a better manifestation of 
God in the flesh than he. 

ITow who will say that a being thus endowed 
can be developed within any narrow sphere of ex- 
istence? Each of woman's known superiorities 
points to an infinite satisfaction. But her entire 
nature is more than a combination of rare quali- 
ties, even a soul fashioned in a peculiar image of 
the Creator, and spurns every boundary line drawn 
around it by human conceit and tyranny. We 
pity the man who has no better work on hand than 
fencing in a district of humanity, and writing over 
the gateway, "Woman's Sphere!" We doubly 
pity the woman who can be content to pace the 
restricted area of this feminine pound, and provided 
she is well fed, housed and filled with comforts 
and flatteries, gracefully fondle the hand that in- 

13 



290 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

scribes her sentence above her prison door. Man's 
sphere is what all the men in the world, working 
till the end of time, can naturally do. Woman's 
sphere is what all the women in the world, work- 
ing till the end of time, can accomplish. Every 
individual man's or woman's sphere, is all that in- 
dividual, working from birth till death, can natu- 
rally and gracefully perform. Therefore, we must 
not limit woman anywhere in the healthy and vir- 
tuous exercise of her energies; w^e must throw 
open the whole field of human enterprise, and call 
her like man to come up and occupy according to 
her ability. 

Does the American woman, have this free field 
for the cultivation of her entire womanhood? 
Theoretically, she has it, especially in the northern 
States of the Republic, to an extent never before 
enjoyed, though not entirely. Practically, she has 
it not, but is yet living within various inclosures 
of custom, fashion, caste, which appear to her the 
granite walls of fate, but which are really walls of 
pasteboard, frescoed in imitation of the barriers 
of the universe. But, does the Creator place her 
in this hapless condition, as tyrants in the parlors, 
and hunkers in the pulpits solemnly proclaim? 
Surely not. Does man deprive her of the right 
she has inherited by nature, and doom her to a 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 291 

gilded slavery, as frantic bloomers shriek to sym- 
pathetic conventions ? Just as surely not. God has 
treated her like all his creatures ; given her a na- 
ture, and set his universe before her, saying: 
" Take what belongs to thee." Man is as much the 
slave of woman, as woman is the slave of man, 
and his tyranny is only the sign of her imbecility. 
She is chiefly responsible for her slavery in every 
department of life. 

If her weak frame makes her a slave to nature, 
she has defaced that body, the perfection of na- 
ture's beauty, to a bundle of quivering nerves and 
diseased organs. If her want of practical efficiency 
makes her the slave of her servants, she has let her 
native activity and tact run to waste. If her ca- 
pricious, sensual and restless affections make her 
the slave of her lover, husband, child, it is because 
she has vacated the throne of her womanly love, 
and crowned effeminate sentiment the queen of 
her heart. If her want of cultivation makes her 
the slave of social customs she despises while she 
obeys, it is because she has preferred ease in the 
present to the labor that swings open the gates of 
the future. If the want of religious experience 
leaves her under the feet of circumstances, it is be- 
cause she has cared less for her soul than some 
temporary advantage, which, grasped, turns to 



292 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

ashes in her hands and leaves her in spiritual beg- 
gary. Her slavery is the retribution of her sins. 
Man does oppress her grievously, but in every bat- 
tle she has the last word and the last blow, and 
never lies quietly in her chain, till she has fastened 
the other end on him. 

There is no hindrance to the development of wo- 
man in America but woman. Freedom must be 
won everywhere. The gracious Creator offers wo- 
man America — an ocean of republican possi- 
bility — for her inheritance. She receives as much 
as she can dip in her cup. If she can only catch 
a tea-cup, or a thimbleful, or scoop in her trem- 
bling hand a little that runs through her fingers, 
it is her misfortune ; but nobody's sin so much as 
hers. If she will go on with a brave heart, using 
what she has, she can be herself and occupy every 
position for which she is quahfied, according to the 
same law by which man succeeds — unflinching 
toil in the acquisition and eternal vigilance in the 
preservation of Freedom. 

But such an effort can only come from a deep 
inspiration of religious obligation. ITot the super- 
stition which makes woman the slave of a mascu- 
line priesthood, but the religion which is the new 
birth of the soul into love and freedom, can give 
her power, even to aspire to her destiny. The 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 293 

sentiment of freedom must be purified, widened 
and deepened by religion, to a controlling principle 
in the sonls of our young countrywomen, before 
tlie victory will be won. For this woman's war of 
independence is no seven years' conflict that can 
be fought through with a great effort ; but a series 
of petty skirmishes daily renewed, lengthening out 
through many generations. Her foes are not ar- 
mies in the field, forts and navies on coast and sea, 
not even the restless throng of men ; she cannot 
fight her father, brother, husband ; but a thousand 
social gnats and mosquitoes, a swarm of domestic 
flies, little weaknesses that never take form, little 
selfishnesses that secretly spoil motives and con- 
duct of elevation, little jealousies, sensualities, un- 
veracities, mean hopes and cunning plans, and de- 
grading half fears, that tie an invisible cord round 
every limb. She marches to her battle, not over 
ditches and up mounds where volleying cannon 
shake the ground, and hissing bombs fiame 
through the smoking air; but along a field of 
spider's webs, through forests interlaced with flow- 
ery vines, and thickets where thorns lurk under 
blossoming roses. Through perpetual irritations 
does she gain her freedom. A half-drunken soldier 
can run like a screeching demon up the road to the 
parapet, swept by its storm of fire and iron. 



294: WOMAN IN AMEKICA. 

against a rampart of pointed steel ; but only a reli- 
gions woman can keep her nerves strong, and her 
spirit high, against the maddening vexations that, 
lilve mocking spirits, switch her with hairs, and 
prick her with needles, and throw flower dnst in 
her eyes along the path of social freedom. But 
she who endures unto the end shall be saved ; and 
as the fire burns deeper and calmer in her soul, 
shall a new vigor nerve her hands and feet, and a 
new grace hover about her form, and a lovelier 
halo of victorious womanhood encircle her brow, 
as she goes to her destiny like a queen to her coro- 
nation. 

There are three stubborn difliculties in the way 
of the American w^oman's achievement of her des- 
tiny — want of health, lack of practical training, 
and deficiency in genuine cultivation of mind and 
manners. • Until our women get more bodily vigor, 
all their asj^irations will be at the mercy of a ner- 
vous fit ; while they are so unpractical in common 
afl'airs, that their husbands must buy their dinners 
and keep their accounts, and their servants look 
down from the eminence of the cooking-stove and 
washing machine in insolent contempt of their 
mistress's shiftlessness, and a man with a cane and 
moustache must be the body-guard of their timor- 
ous gteps abroad, and two untirable arms bear them 



WCMAN IN AMERICA. 295 

unharmed through the perils of journey by rail- 
road and steamship ; why talk of more rights, 
when they have thrown away the primary human 
right of keeping out of fire and water and taking 
care of themselves? While they prefer a little 
embroidery and less French; a limb wrenched 
from the last opera, dissected again by the sharp 
edge of song ; a little waltzing and a good deal of 
dressing and party-going, to the knowledge that 
is gained only by years of patient observation, 
reading and reflection, and the social tact that is 
but the largest and wisest expression of a good 
heart and a refined mind — ^how can they expect to 
make a society that shall allure the strongest and 
best within its charmed walls ? 

A great religious inspiration can alone keep 
woman fixed to the toils which shall overcome 
these obstacles. Inspired with this spirit of re- 
ligious independence, and armed with the prac- 
tical forces of health, skill and culture, the Ameri- 
can woman will be prepared to commence the 
work of regenerating and reconstructing our social 
state. Here she must begin on her own familar 
ground — home. Woman must first have her 
rights under her own family roof, or all her at- 
tempts to gain them elsewhere will recoil upon 
herself. Therefore let the primary application 



296 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

of her newly inspired energy be made within 
those fonr sacred walls, where she is mistress, if 
anywhere on earth. "We have no American home. 
We have, doubtless, thousands of families more or 
less harmoniously constructed ; we have other 
thousands of houses where two hard-working peo- 
ple and their children toil, eat, dress and sleep, 
with exemplary diligence for a quarter of a centu- 
ry; we have gilded meti-opolitan hotels, more or 
less splendid, in all large towns, where husband, 
wife and little ones, are stowed away in narrow 
private apartments, that they may shine in the 
splendor of the saloon and the dining-hall; we 
have boarding of all sorts, from genteel to ungen- 
teel, and one way and another, our people get more 
to eat, drink, wear and enjoy than any other people, 
but with a smaller result of real comfort and hap- 
piness. Our houses hardly rest on solid ground ; 
they go on wheels and rock on waves. The life of 
the street, like a strong wind, rushes continually 
through them. We are restless in our own rock- 
ing-chair, by our own table, on our own bed ; our 
family resources for happiness are meagre, and the 
morbid intensity of the household spoils health, 
and defeats the end of domestic life. 

The cultivated American woman must recreate 
this sphere of life. She must lay the foundation 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 297 

of home in deep quiet love, in unflagging dili- 
gence, in sound health, in a solid culture, and un- 
affected refinement of manners. Let her begin by 
marrying for spiritual companionship, and a Christ- 
ian home, not for a position. There can be no 
home to a pair falsely mated ; there may be splen- 
dor and success of many kinds, but the paradise 
of according minds and hearts, which swims like a 
mirage before the eye of the youth, will never be 
theirs. Then let her whole influence be exerted to 
found the practical side of the household, in that 
noble economy and simplicity that scorns to use 
what it has not ; and its spiritual side on a natural 
style of behavior and manners. Adopting foreign 
customs as far as they can be brought in vital con- 
nection with the life around her, and neglecting 
all nonsense, however popular, she may create a 
place where every power shall be refreshed, and 
every virtue developed. Let her keej) her home, 
a home ; and not pervert it to a means of social 
ambition ; train her children to human worth, not 
to be spectacles in society ; and as wealth and op- 
portunities increase, build up on the side of true re- 
finement and lasting comfort. Thus will there be 
at last a home, pervaded with the American spirit 
of a cultivated freedom, where all shall be free, 
yet, each be tlie minister of all ; and life shall 

18* 



298 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

deepen into peace and expand into power and 
grace. 

As soon as tliis home exists, woman will have all 
the rights over property and her own children, of 
which she is now unjustly deprived. Legislators 
will not dare to refuse the demand of the mass of 
cultivated wives and mothers, that they shall no 
longer be legally merged in man. The reason why 
the American people tolerate laws, derived from the 
society of the middle ages on these subjects, is 
that tliere are not women enough who care to en- 
ter or remain in domestic life, on dignified terms 
of equality with man to demand their alteration. 
It is easier for most women to trust to management 
and importunity for their pecuniary supplies, than 
to labor for the recognition of woman's just rights 
of property; and few mothers contemplate the 
event of being called to choose between a living 
death with their children in the house of a tyrant, 
or a selfish release to be shared alone ; and thus 
the abuse continues. But a true family life will 
bring the community to the point where such ine- 
qualities can no longer exist ; and when the Ameri- 
can woman claims justice, as one pillar of the Re- 
publican home, it will not be denied. 

Standing firmly at home, woman will be able to 
look beyond her household, and claim lier rights 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 299 

in other spheres. First will come the demand for 
a better education. She may reasonably claim the 
highest opportunities for scholastic culture which 
are enjoyed by man. If she knew with what husks 
of knowledge she is put off, under the showy pre- 
tensions of fashionable girls' schools, ladies' maga- 
zines, popular lectures and female literature in 
general, she would scorn the flatteries by which 
her want of real culture is concealed. As a class, 
young women do not know the meaning of the 
word study as known to every educated man. 
Constantly fed on the flowers of science and litera- 
ture, and accustomed to turn away from every 
granite wall of culture, along the vine-decked paths 
that skirt its base, they come up to womanhood, 
perhaps confirmed in the delusion that they are edu- 
cated, while the intellectual life has never been 
awakened. Thus they are left at the beginning of 
their real life to the tender mercies of the polite 
literature of the day, and the popular lecture-room. 
The cure of this state of things is the union of the 
sexes in the whole career of scholastic culture. 
The boys and girls of America should be put in 
the same school, under equally skillful teachers, 
carried through an equally thorough course of 
instruction in high school, academy and college. 
Now, the girl is stopped at the college door by a 



300 WOMAN IN AMEBICA. 

polite usher, wlio conducts lier to the fashionable 
female seminary, where she learns a more superfi- 
cial science, and is narrowed by exclusive contact 
with her own sex. The boy is taught to study in the 
severe discipline of the University, but his nature 
hardens, and his manners, health and habits are in 
peril through his seven years' collegiate and pro- 
fessional career ; and when the sexes meet again 
after this monastic separation, they are changed 
fatally for future companionship. 

I solemnly believe that most of the foolish mar- 
riages a.nd domestic unhappiness among educated 
men, are the results of this unnatural separation 
from women during the most sensitive portion of 
youth and early manhood. Tlie only natural 
restraint on the rudeness and rampant passions of 
the growing boy, is the refining infiuence of a girl 
engaged in the same employment. Separate the 
two, and the boy becomes coarse and careless in 
manners, impure in thought, and half insane in 
imagination. Sitting on three chairs in a college 
room, in which disorder has become organized, 
deprived of his true society, he conjures up an 
ideal female, in whose construction his appetites 
and unpractical fancy fill the outline formed by the 
goddesses of Homer and Yirgil, and the heroines 
of the English and French novelists ; and when he 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 301 

comes out upon professional life, he issues into a 
new world, where every bright-eyed damsel sug- 
gests the ideal that wavered amid curling clouds 
of cigar smoke above his student head ; and having 
married a goddess, he is very apt to awake to the 
saddening conviction that his happiness is wrecked 
on the rock of a false union. Were the sexes 
trained together they would know each other's 
strength and weakness, and not only stimulate each 
other to greater exertions, but also teach one 
another good breeding and knowledge of practical 
affairs. The tide of popular sentiment is now run- 
ning strongly in favor of this educational right of 
woman in America. Already our revised system 
of common schools is placing the sexes on common 
ground ; and several vigorous collegiate schools 
have demonstrated the advantage of union in the 
higher walks of culture. It only remains for our 
young women to spurn witli womanly contempt 
this sham education that is proffered them in 
fashionable life, and at any sacrifice secure the 
best advantages, and never give over their impor- 
tunity till their daughters shall be installed into 
the best privileges of American culture. 

Tlie result of this increase of intelligence will be 
a new desire to enlarge the sphere of female in- 
dustry. Is there any reason that while the Ameri- 



302 WOMAN IN AMEKICA. 

can boy is placed in a profession at one and twenty, 
tlie American girl is left dependent on her parents 
until this boy chooses to make her his wife ? It is 
false and injurious. Dependence is as galling to a 
true woman as to a man; and whatever disguise 
of sentimental rhetoric you throw over it, every 
sensible girl in a large family knows it is absurd 
that she should be a young lady without em- 
ployment, except such as she adopts to kill time, 
livmg on her father till she can find a husband. 
What restlessness, what disgust of life, what temp- 
tation to unmaidenly scheming in the sacred affairs 
of the heart, what untold domestic wretchedness 
this state of gilded slavery entails on the sex, 
only a wise woman can describe. Tlie remedy 
for this is not kitchen work alone ; there is not 
enough domestic work in families of several girls 
to arouse the industrial energies of all. Study 
is not enough; for true study without definite 
aim is only possible for highly cultivated minds, 
and only one girl in a thousand can regularly pur- 
sue a science or accomplishment for which she sees 
no practical bearing. Tlie girls of America need 
a thorough training in some form of profitable and 
congenial labor, on which they can depend for 
steady occupation, which shall relieve them of 
pecuniary dependence, and keep their minds stea- 



WOMAN IN" AMERICA. 303 

died by actual contact with the real work-day 
world. Then, study will have a new charm, 
health will not be spoiled by inactivity, and every 
young woman can wait till a suitable young man 
appears before she marries. Then, young men 
will look on marriage as a privilege, knowing a 
wife will be a " help meet for them," not a bundle 
of physical helplessness draped in expensive dry 
goods ; and the practical skill of the woman will 
keep the man industrious and virtuous. 

Whatever the last volume of poems you read 
may say to the contrary, young woman, nothing so 
claims the growing respect and holds the constant 
affection of men as the union of a womanly heart 
with womanly practical energy. Highly wrought 
raptures are very well in their time ; smiles and 
tears and sentimental longings are surely a part of 
life ; but the woman who can only sit in her rock- 
ing-chair, and drench her cambric handkerchief 
wlien hard labor, or narrow circumstances, or 
great sorrow darken the household; or can only 
dance when good fortune comes in at the door, 
cannot reckon on a permanent influence over any 
strong man. Tlie most beautiful thing to our sex 
is an affection that is ever taking active forms of 
expression, that talks less than it does, that silently 
builds up a home while we are engrossed outside, 



304 WOMAN IN AMEEICA. 

that is competent to advise us in the conduct of 
affairs, and when we are at our wits' end has some 
happj plan in reserve by which we can go on. 
Such a woman takes her husband's arm and goes 
over every step in life, and when misfortune comes 
she does not become a dissolving view of ineffi- 
ciency and vaporous sentiment, but only clasps the 
friendly arm a little closer, and new courage flows 
through every manly nerve, to overcome the worst 
that life can do. 

We must throw open every species of labor to 
woman, and let her peculiar power choose what is 
best for herself. There is no danger that she will 
permanently occupy any place inconsistent with 
her womanly dignity, or drive men from any work 
they can do better than she. The community will 
know whose labor is most valuable in every depart- 
ment of activity, and ultimately sustain woman 
wherever she can sustain herself. I have no 
fear that our American girls will injure their 
womanhood behind the counter, in the manu- 
factory, in the printing office, or wherever they 
choose to go. I know tastes differ ; but I, in com- 
mon with many sensible men, prefer the spectacle 
of a company of intelligent young women in 
active employment at any respectable occupation, 
to the melancholy procession of idle, bedizened 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 305 

femininity tliat daily sweeps the pavements with 
swelling satin and French kid ; the funeral proces- 
sion of American womanhood. And if yonng 
women knew their own souls and true destiny, 
they would not rest till their hands and minds 
found substantial employment that would at once 
do something for society, and sustain and ennoble 
themselves. Until this is done, there is no hoj)e 
of woman's emancipation ; for while man holds 
her in a pecuniary dependence from which she 
does not aspire to rise, her ideal of freedom will be 
only a school-girl's dream. 

I am aware that this extension of the field of 
female industry will bring woman into the sphere 
of professional life to a greater extent than now, 
and I am not ignorant of the ridicule with which 
thousands of women are accustomed to visit the 
efforts of their sisters in this direction. But is not 
the radical question of woman in the professions 
already settled by the community ? If ever the 
sex were to be shut out of this area of life, the 
time has passed, for women are already in several 
departments of professional activity. In author- 
ship, school teaching, and the fine arts of painting, 
sculpture, music, and the drama, they are natural- 
ized ; and probably no persons would more vigor- 
ously oppose any attempt to eject them from these 



306 WOMAN m AMERICA. 

posts than those who are shocked at their attempt 
to win new positions. The fact is proven, that 
woman can act in public capacity and not lose one 
grace of her nature, while her service to the com- 
munity is undoubted; and in two additional pro- 
fessions, medicine and popular lecturing, the people 
have already decided that she shall have her 
place. 

Surely it would be hard to deny to her who in 
her capacity of housekeej)er, parent and creator of 
social customs, is responsible for a large share of 
the disease in the world, an opportunity to aid in 
its cure. Surely the present success of the medi- 
cal profession in preserving the health of the 
people is not so overwhelmingly evident that it can 
afford to spurn her proffered assistance. IS'obody 
objects to a woman lecturer, if she lectures well, 
and I suppose nobody approves a man lecturer if 
he lectures ill. One sect of Christians has opened 
the office of religious instruction in the church to 
woman, and with no special evil results ; indeed, 
the best preacher in the American sect of Friends 
is now a woman. I cannot but think the time 
is coming when some of the high Cliristian culture 
that now especially distinguishes the best women 
of the land, will find a tongue and waken new 
echoes in consecrated places. In the present sub- 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 307 

division of the legal profession, I can hardly under 
stand why women might not occupy many posts as 
successfully as men. This question of professional 
success is not to be decided a priori, but by ex- 
perience. It is absurd to say a woman loses dig- 
nity in the pulpit and at the bar, and retains it in 
the concert, on the stage, and in the public ball- 
room. Whatever part of professional efiort she 
can hold usefully to society and naturally to her- 
self, is hers by the only right which man can as- 
sert — the right of conquest. 

Tlie more radical friends of the wonaan's move- 
ment affirm that the right of sufirage and elegi- 
bility to public office are essential to the freedom 
of the sex. With the logic that conducts to this 
conclusion I can discern no defect. If anybody 
can tell me why 20,000 men who cannot read 
and write should be permitted to vote in ISTew 
York hecause they are men, and the 20,000 most 
cultivated women refused that privilege hecause 
they are women — why thousands of wealthy females 
should pay taxes which they never have a voice in 
imposing — why woman should be tried in courts 
of justice exclusively before masculine juries — 
why men alone should make laws that women 
must obey — I would be glad to hear a reasonable 
argument. I know the difficulties attending the 



308 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

whole complicated question of free suffrage ; but 
it seems to me, we must either restrict the right 
of suffrage in America yet more than now, or 
throw it open, in time, to the other sex. We do 
not yet know the result of unlimited suffrage ; the 
experiment is still being tried; experience alone 
will decide what is to come of it. Meanwhile 
women do already influence politics mightily. 
The women of our Southern States sustain the 
great evil of negro slavery that rules the Govern- 
ment of America. If they would rise to-morrow 
and proclaim human bondage wicked and vulgar, 
every chain would fall and the oppressed go free. 
The women of the ISTorthern States move the men 
that make the laws according to their intelligence 
and interest in the history and life of the nation ; 
and I cannot understand how a young American 
woman can be indifferent to the momentous ideas 
involved in our national experiment. I do not 
know whether the women of America will ever, as 
a body, demand the right of suffrage ; certain I am, 
if they do, we shall be as eager to give it them as 
we are now to give them the wealth and luxury 
we wear out our lives to obtain. Whatever woman 
wants in this countr}^ she can have ; and it rests with 
her whether slie assumes the full privilege of Ameri- 
can citizenship or acts for the state through man. 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 309 

These are the several steps along which woman 
will advance to the Eepiiblican style of character, 
in America. At every step society will be richer 
and more characteristic of our great national 
idea. Only where acting freely and out of the 
fullness of her womanhood, can she construct that 
peculiar social state which is the outgrowth of our 
institutions. "We do not know what that society 
will be ; but surely it will be truthful, wise, strong 
and free as it is not now. Under the guidance of 
cultivated woman, the American man will be a 
different being from the man we know; for in 
gaining peace and happiness he will gain purity 
and refinement. The crowning grace of our life 
will then be a new beauty — ^the beauty of freedom 
— which shall adorn and elevate the home, the 
street, the halls of pleasure, the seats of learning, 
and mould the manners and refine the public life 
of the people. Then shall we know, that, much as 
w^oman has been and done in the world, it was re- 
served for the magic influence of national liberty 
to reveal her nature in its entire loveliness and 
power. Then, unhindered by outward restrictions 
and set free from the bondage of selfishness within, 
will she become the divine force of love she was 
made to be, and strew the land with flowers by her 
presence. No nation of men worship woman with 



310 WOMAN IN AMERICA. 

an adoration so sincere and blind, as the Ameri- 
cans ; will slie be content to abuse this admiration, 
and while she is an idol, neglect the culture of that 
lofty womanhood which shall deserve it? This 
adoration we pay her is not folly ; it is now extrava- 
gance, for she does not deserve it ; but it is a pro- 
phecy of what woman can become under the in- 
spiration of freedom. For when the true woman 
of America shall appear, she whose nature will 
mirror the glories and graces of a Republican State, 
as the waters of our lakes and rivers mirror the 
mountains with their crowning forests and the 
overarching skies, and who can rouse up men to 
adorn Liberty by their justice at home, and make 
it venerable to the nations abroad ; then will there 
be one who deserves our utmost reverence, and, 
next to God, claims our manly devotion and ador- 
ing love. 

That style of woman has not come ; but, young 
women, you are born to hasten her coming. Shall 
I affront you by the suspicion that you will prefer 
the material side of freedom to this, her noblest 
spiritual results ? Shall I not rather put into words 
the throbbing of your own hearts, now too way- 
ward to revere demands, yet generous to the high- 
est appeal, and say : Before God, this day shall 
witness a new consecration to the obligation of my 



WOMAN IN AMERICA. 311 

time and coiintiy ; for heneefortli I live no more to 
self and sloth, but forgetting the mean prizes which 
slaves wring out of a newlj-gained emancipation, 
move onward to the full consummation of that 
liberty which shall make me free in bonds of a 
love that binds self and home, society and country 
in a golden chain, and suspends the world below 
the throne of God. 



XII. 
THE CHURCHES; 

OR, 

EELIGION IN NEW YOKE. 

It cannot be said the Capital City is destitute of 
Religions Listitntions. The wants of its 60,000 
people are ministered to by fifty churches, which, by 
their creeds and ceremonies, represent almost every 
form of faith, from the ancient Hebrew to the 
newest form of Protestant Christian. Fifty clergy- 
men officiate in these houses of worship, and among 
the homes of the people. There is, probably, a seat 
in a church for two of every three in its population, 
though the brightest Sunday morning sees only 
one-third of the whole people under a consecrated 
roof. There are thirty-five Sunday-schools, con- 
taining 7,000 children ; and several mission-schools 
and benevolent institutions complete the ecclesi- 
astical machinery of the place. 

Tills relative proportion holds good throughout 
14 ^13 



314 THE CHURCHES ; OE, 

the State. JS'ew York contains 5,077 clmrclies, 
affording seats for 2,141,159 of lier 3,466,212 peo- 
ple, althougli the average attendance on public wor- 
ship is estimated at only 1,124,211 ; and there are 
only 702,384 members of churches. These churches, 
with other property connected, are valued in the 
census table at $31,480,128 ; and the yearly sala- 
ries of clergymen at $2,411,683, giving an average 
of $400 a year to a body of men harder worked 
and poorer paid than any class in the Common- 
wealth. Of these 5,077 churches, the Catholics 
own the comparatively small number of 291 ; there 
are 19 Jewish Synagogues ; and the remainder are 
divided among the Protestant sects, in the follow- 
ing order: Methodist, 1,580; Baptist, 882; Presby- 
terian, 710 ; Episcopalian, 346 ; Evangelical Congre- 
gational, 301 ; Eeformed Dutch, 260 ; Liberal Christ- 
ians (including the Christians and Disciples), 250 ; 
Friends, 134 ; Lutheran and other German Evan- 
gelical, 132 ; Swedenborgian, 3 ; Second Advent, 
8 ; Shakers, 3 ; while one solitary conventicle re- 
joices in the name of "Protestant Communion of 
Free Laspiration." Bat in estimating the religious 
institutions of our State, we must also reckon the 
large body of dissenters from all these forms of 
worship, whose wants are supplied by the numer- 
ous radical conventions and itinerant lecturers 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 315 

wMcli have become a very characteristic mode of 
religions and philanthropic agitation in onr north- 
ern States. It is not too mnch to say, that full one- 
fourth of our population obtain all their public 
instruction in religion from these new sources. 
When we consider, in addition, the immense circu- 
lation of the religious press, in its various forms of 
theological and reformatory newspapers, pamph- 
lets and books ; and remember, also, that the city 
of 'New York is fast becoming the centre from 
which all our organized religious institutions 
operate, and where the plans are matured for j)ro- 
moting the success of every sect and party, con- 
servative and radical, we may well be astonished 
at the amount of energy, wealth, and ability, now 
engaged in representing the religious condition of 
our people ; and the questions : How far does this 
vast machinery represent the religion of the State ; 
and how well is it adapted to the application of a 
pure Christianity to our civilization? assume an 
importance transcending any others that can be 
asked of our great Commonwealth. 

For to say that the success of a Eepublican civili- 
zation in New York depends on the success of a 
pure Christianity, is to rej)ort a fact demonstrated 
by the experience of mankind. In opposition to 
the strange assumptions of Mr. Buckle, that moral 



316 THE CHXJKCHES; OE, 

ideas have nothing to do with the progress of civi- 
lization, we believe the whole condition of every 
commnnity on earth is an outgrowth from its reli- 
gious faith. The depth and intelligence of a peo- 
ple's belief in snch questions as the origin, duty, 
and destiny of man, measure their achievements in 
all respects ; and those nations which have been 
farthest along in religion have ruled the earth by 
the power of their ideas, perpetuating themselves 
through generations. This State of ISTew York is 
what she now is to-day by force, not of her super- 
ficial, but real belief or disbelief in these funda- 
mental questions of being ; and could we know 
the actual position of her people towards the ideas 
of love to God and man, which are the centre of 
Christianity, all the phenomena of her private and 
public life would be explained. 

The whole significance of Jesus Christ and the 
history of Christianity is concentrated in tliis law 
of love. Whoever has attained a character 
shaped by the indwelling power of love to God 
and man is a Christian, and whatever people has 
achieved a civilization expressive of the same eter- 
nal love is a Christian state. The true Christian 
church in ISTew York would therefore be the union 
of the Christian citizens of the State to resist every 
idea and practice opposed to the law of love, and 



RELIGION IN NEW YOKK. 317 

to promote the elevation of public and private 
character towards this lofty ideal of human perfec- 
tion ; thns saving men from sin and making their 
present state of being a fit introduction to their 
immortal career. Whatever diflerences of cere- 
monial or organization might characterize its vari- 
ous divisions, these would never be permitted to 
obstruct the practical union of all good men and 
women for personal holiness and ];)nblic virtue. 

However numerous the theories concerning 
Christian theology, or the creeds in which the 
thought of the past is condensed, the freedom of 
opinion would not be invaded, and every man's 
tliought would be judged by his life, instead of his 
character being measured by his creed. Thus 
while all needful independence of theological 
speculation, and variety of religious ceremonial 
would be secured, the church of ]^ew York would 
be the spiritual union of all Christians in love and 
charity, insuring a practical union for every emer- 
gency, when the powers of evil should challenge 
the friends of God and man to conflict for truth 
and righteousness. This is the idea of Christianity 
and the Christian Church, taught by the founder 
of our religion ; and until both are realized in this 
State, no excess of wealth, or culture, or political 
power, or social refinement will do more than gild 



318 THE CHUKCHES ; OR, 

the barbarism in whicb man always remains until 
bis life moves in glad obedience to the immutable 
law of tbe Divine Benevolence. 

Tried by this standard of excellence, we cannot 
acknowledge that Xew York is a Christian State. 
For however pure and active a minority of her 
citizens may be, it cannot be affirmed that the 
majority have attained a character moulded by 
Christian love. Neither does her civilization pre- 
figure the kingdom of heaven. Are her industry, 
her politics, her society, her literature founded on 
Christian benevolence ? To ask the question is to 
answer it. Every good man knows that, however 
far in advance of former periods, or other commu- 
nities, we are yet in the bonds of a materialistic idea 
of life ; are not civilized enough to acknowledge 
that love is the corner-stone of true success. 

Kow what is the condition of the organized reli- 
gion on which we are depending for the conversion 
of this half barbarism to a true social state? Is the 
church in l^evf York, a true Christian Church, 
according to the ideas of Jesus ? Can we hope 
that our present ecclesiastical institutions, in their 
present method of operation, will make the Empire 
State first in righteousness, as she is already first 
in power among the free communities of the earth ? 
That the church of New York is not doing this 



RELIGION m NEW YOEK. 319 

work so well or so fest as good men could wish, is 
too obvious to be denied. In the first place, it 
can command the attendance of only one-third of 
the people on its ceremonies and instructions ; and 
numbers only one-fifth as nominal members of the 
Christian fold. With a population in open agree- 
ment with Christianity, with the field entirely 
undisputed, with all the aids of wealth, the press, 
and the perpetual services of 6,000 ministers trusted 
and privileged like no other class, it is still ob- 
liged to confess to this want of success. Even this 
one-fifth which constitutes the visible body of com- 
municants, cannot be called the leading force in 
the civilization of the State. The church has not 
uniformly led the people in the best social reforms 
of the past fifty years ; it has oftener been forced 
abroad by an outside pressure. It does not lead 
the State, to-day, in the most vital life of an advanc- 
ing society ; a few divisions of it are abreast of the 
best life of the times, but other divisions are back 
in the middle ages ; and as a whole, it is so divided 
by obstinate and bitter hostilities, so involved in 
its own machinery, that it has never, in one in- 
stance, united to do any one good work for the 
people. These 6,000 ministers are not the advance 
men of the day, not preeminently the moral leaders 
of the State. The people show them great outward 



320 THE CHUECHES ; OK, 

respect ; but four-fifths of tliem refuse to do what 
the clergy affirm is essential to eternal life, and 
they pay them $400 a year. As a necessary con- 
sequence, the majority of our people are unsettled 
in belief and practice to an alarming degree. A 
deep-rooted skepticism is spreading among the 
leading classes of every district, often concealed, 
but none the less destructive. Large masses of the 
people are adrift ; now excited by a revival, now 
by a radical convention, unsatisfied with either. 
Who knows what his neighbor really believes on 
man's origin, duty, destiny? "We do not affirm 
our organized religion a failure ; its various merits 
need no defence, and it does immense good, at 
least in keeping things as well as they are. But 
we are still less prepared to call it a great success, 
while its real hold on the people is so uncertain, 
and it is forced to take the secondary position 
in every battle between barbarism and practical 
Christianity. We must assert that the church of 
New York is still far below the mark at which it 
may reasonably claim the superiority it now does ; 
that its condition is becoming a painful problem 
for all wise religious men to contemplate. 

While we acknowledge the whole truth in regard 
to the difficulty of elevating any community by the 
purest religion, we must still declare that the 



KELIGION EN NEW YORK. 321 

church is greatly at fault in the present state of 
affairs. We blame it not so much for its inability 
to convert the wicked and indifferent, as for the 
spurious character of much of the Christianity in 
its own fold. It is because the religion it really 
creates is so often futile, timid, useless ; so much a 
thing of words and ceremonies, and so little a prac- 
tical force for the right, that we feel compelled, as 
its best friend, to proclaim its shortcomings, and 
assert that the Protestantism of JSTew York to-day 
needs a Keformation as certainly as the Catholicism 
of Europe in the days of Luther. We have no 
sympathy with the enemies of the church ; we do 
not believe Christian institutions are to die out as 
man grows ; but we believe the church must pass 
through many a period of regeneration before she 
will be the symbol of a pure Christianity. Eeform 
or die is now the destiny of our popular ecclesias- 
ticism. jSTot that the church of 'New York cannot 
exist as now, and become even more rich, splendid 
in its ceremonial, and popular in its dispensations 
than at present ; but then it will cease to be a 
church of God, and become only an ecclesiastical, 
a social corporation in no way representative of 
Christianity. To apply the law of love to the life 
of New York demands the reforming of several 
popular vices, and the cultivation of several uncom- 

14* 



322 THE CHUECHES; OR, 

mon virtues. Let us indicate the direction wMcli 
this revival of true religion in the church must 
take. 

The great European Keformation of the 16th 
century, which resulted in Protestantism, was 
chiefly a revolt against ecclesiastical tyranny. A 
mighty thing was done when the church v;as burst 
asunder and the despotic unity of Eoman Catho- 
licism forever destroyed. But no great evil is 
cured at once, and ecclesiastical intolerance has 
been one of the greatest evils in Protestant lands. 
In the nations of Europe adoj)ting the Reformed 
Religion, the most obstinate efforts of the people 
have not yet sufficed to shake off the oppression of 
great, consolidated establishments assuming the 
guardianship of God's truth. And in ISTew York 
to-day, ecclesiasticism is a fearful power. Every 
Protestant sect is now a close cor2:)oration, working 
for power, often by very questionable means, cov- 
eting wealth and position, rewarding its friends 
and punishing its enemies. Its clergy and active 
laity are counted faithful in proportion as they toil 
for its aggrandizement. The enterprise and popu- 
lar habits of our people are strongly implicated in 
this work ; and to an outside observer, the manoeu- 
vering of these sects appears but little to excel 
those of the political parties in dignity or purity. 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 323 

Like the parties, they have their platforms, their 
campaign issues, their fusions and schisms, their 
system of rewarding friends and shooting deserters, 
and he must be credulous indeed who permits the 
assumption of a party phraseology to blind him to 
the realities of the case. If there is found a cer- 
tain security in the fact that these sects are so 
numerous and so evenly mated ; on the other 
hand, this encourages that strife for popularity, 
which is the demon of the American Church. The 
results are the oppression of the people, who are 
wheeled about in masses by the church leaders, 
and cheated of their freedom by the force of social 
pressure and the theological fear of detraction ; 
while each of the sects fears to commit itself to a 
pure morality, lest it should thereby be lowered in 
public estimation and outbid by a less scrupulous 
opponent. 

"We need a new application of the great Protes- 
tant idea that man is superior to sects. The church 
in ISTew York must learn that Eeligion is above 
corporations and parties ; that to create a great 
ecclesiasticism by flattering the vices of the people 
is not to do God's work but Satan's work ; that to 
grow rich, strong, numerous, by the acts of a 
worldly policy, and use power tlius gained to 
crush out opposition, is to kill Christian love, and 



324 THE CHURCHES ; OR, 

bring in tlie reign of universal skepticism. Unless 
tliis tendency to sectarian partisanship is checked, 
it is not difficult to see that all true men will at last 
be disgusted, and driven from organizations that 
prefer their own enlargement and perpetuity to the 
glory of God and the good of man. 

But the peculiar evil of Protestantism is not so 
much ecclesiasticism as dogmatism. The reign 
of the poj^e in the middle ages has been followed 
by the reign of the creed in modern days. And 
an imperative necessity in the church of 'New York 
is the abolition of the whole system of infallible dog- 
mas. Each sect has now a creed which is practi- 
cally made the test of religious character. "Who- 
ever accepts it and serves God that ivay has a hope 
of eternal life ; whoever does not is in danger of 
perdition, or at least is reckoned unchristian. The 
Protestant Evangelical sects unite to call all the 
world unchristian who reject the so-called evangeli- 
cal dogmas ; the Roman-Catholic retorts with equal 
insolence and equal reason; the Liberalists too 
often catch the intolerance and make the creed the 
measure of the life. ]S"ow a creed is a good thing if 
properly used. Every creed is the condensed idea 
of some division of Christendom on religion, and 
each probably contains some valuable truth. If 
men, can be at liberty to investigate, compare. 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 325 

select, and hold them in the spirit of loyalty to 
truth, enconraged to enlarge their own belief as 
fast as they grow in knowledge, there is no harm 
in their use. But now, when they are used as for- 
tresses in which to shut up and imprison their 
nominal beliefs, they have become a monstrous 
evil. What narrowness of mind, and uncharitable- 
ness of heart — what grinding tyranny over weak 
and timid minds — what wicked slander of oppo- 
nents — what hypocrisy and self delusions, grow 
out of this wretched assumption of theological in- 
fallibility is becoming more apparent to every 
good man. 

The Protestantism of the day must cease this 
mimicry of the worst sin of Papacy ; withdraw its 
absurd pretensions of infallibility, which only ex- 
pose it to the derision of reflecting minds ; and 
while maintaining the truth given it with all its 
might, never deny the sacred right of free thought 
or expression on religion. "We rejoice that a re- 
form is already commencing in this direction. The 
best thing in the revival of last winter was the 
agreement of a few sects to ignore doctrinal dis- 
tinctions for a time, in a work of Christian evan- 
gelization. The next great revival will demolish 
the remaining pretensions of a Protestant dog- 
matism to hold the keys of heaven and hell, and 



326 THE CHURCHES ; OR, 

leave the people free to think, to tlie vast gain of 
pure religion. 

Equally essential is a reform in liumanitj. The 
Protestant church of 'New York is, as a -whole, 
unhuman. It is a factitious world of its own ; a 
little realm of priests and churches and ceremonies 
and prayers outside the real world. It ignores 
New York in favor of some future heaven of which 
it talks much in proportion as it knows little. Con- 
sequently the church life of the State is quite too 
much aloof from the actual life of the people. The 
real evils of society, the real state of mind among 
the masses, the real course of events, are almost un- 
Ivuown to it. So it can gather the disciples into 
the charmed circle of the church and talk of future 
bliss, it gladly forgets the present. But whatever 
the church thinks, this State of ISTew York is a 
great fact, that cannot be spirited away by the 
theories of a million doctors of divinity. And 
whatever the clergy may agree to consider ortho- 
dox, no religion is truly Christian which cannot 
go to the people as they are, and regenerate them 
where they are, and make them holy by the ap- 
plication of the law of love, and extirpate the evils 
of society by testing every region of life, and 
every form of character by the law of God. Every 
church that cannot do the work of applying Christ- 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 327 

ianitj to this three and a half millions of people, 
and making a heaven of this forty-six thousand 
square miles of territory, may as well vacate at 
once, for its days are numbered. 

It would be gross injustice to deny that many 
portions of the church are awakening to this duty ; 
it would be flattery to say that there does not yet 
remain so much to be done, and that speedily, that 
safety lies only in repentance. The best peoj^le of 
IN^ew York are fast coming to the conclusion that a 
church that loves itself more than man is not worth 
the expense of keeping alive ; and the next quar- 
ter of a century will be shaken with an agitation, 
that will wake the sleepiest conventicle from its 
sacred repose to a perception of its duty to the 
struggling cause of righteousness in this Republic. 

As the legitimate result of these vices of dogma- 
tism, ecclesiasticism, and unhumanity, the church 
of l^ew York is threatened with death from disinte- 
gration. Of course every man who cannot live 
under the yoke of the creed, or the corporation, 
goes out, and either becomes a radical, or forms a 
new church. Thus sects multiply, conventicles 
increase in number, and decrease in supporters. 
Every village and town in the country is strug- 
gling to sustain several Protestant churches. The 
money which would support one clergyman is 



328 THE CHURCHES ; OK, 

divided among three or four ; and this wretched 
system of compensation drives thousands of the 
best qualified youth away from a proper profession, 
and fills the pulpits with inferior men. This again 
reacts on the peoj^le, who lose interest in a Gospel 
so feebly proclaimed, and the church languishes 
towards a fall, and is only kept alive by frequent 
spasmodic excitements. A Christianity so divided 
and debilitated, can never unite to sustain the 
right in any great public emergency. Let any 
formidable enemy to society take the field, sap- 
ported by the passions of multitudes and the pres- 
tige of wealth, and what a feeble opponent it finds 
in the sects. Every church is pressed to live at 
all ; it cannot afibrd to ofi'end even a few ad- 
herents, by actively exposing the truth. Every 
denomination is jealous of its neighbor, and will 
not unite with it, lest it should seem to indorse its 
deadly heresy. So the churches keep quiet, or 
talk in cloudy generalities, and the adversary walks 
over the course. 

A great public evil is always a unit; it goes 
together and conquers, by dividing its opponents. 
When the church condescends to learn from the 
devil his great secret of Iceeping his forces to- 
gether^ it will conquer him ; till that, he will 
ravage the country even under the shadows of 



1 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 329 

the spires, and fear the sight of an ecclesiastical 
convention no more than an army would fear an 
undisciplined mob. The consequence of a refor- 
mation in the former respects will be a willingness 
to unite for all the uses of practical religion. 
Why, could this great church of N'ew York heartily 
agree to make a holy crusade against any sin, it 
might render the most daring vice of our people 
execrable, and drive it out from the sight of decent 
society. Unless it can agree to do this, it will 
have a fearful account to settle wdth those w^ho 
love God's truth, and will not long be silent over 
its eclipse. Better no church, than one that can 
never be found when most wanted. Let the pre- 
sent establishment continue to crumble, till it leaves 
some way of concentrating its forces for God and 
humanity. 

How shall this good work of reform be accom- 
plished ? We answer, by the persistent efforts of the 
wisest and most religious people w^ho still remain 
w- ithin the church ; and by a new movement to- 
w^ards a liberal organization among those who have 
permanently left it. 

There are tw^o classes in the church, of whom 
little can be expected in this reformation. The 
first consists of the sincere bigots, who cannot 
understand how a soul can get to heaven except 



330 THE CHUKCHES; OK, 

by crawling through the eye of their sectarian 
needle. We can do justice to the sincerity and 
moral worth of many of these persons, and yet feel 
that if the church falls they are chiefly responsible. 
Little is to be expected from an honest bigot, 
because bigotry implies narrowness of mind, and 
while the sufferer, under this malady can see only 
through his present eyes, reason and charity will 
be alike unavailing to move him onward. "We 
can only leave him to the grace of God, and pray 
that his eyes may be opened in this world, or in 
some distant eternity. 

For the second class of worldly people who seek 
the church for sake of social position, pecuniary or 
other emoluments, even less can be expected. Of 
all people who fill our churches these are the most 
hopeless. For they are using Religion for their 
own aggrandizement, and are quite indifferent to 
the meaning of Christianity. JSTo sect is free from 
this class, although the most powerful are neces- 
sarily the most afflicted. Every attempt at reform 
will be frowned down by those who fear any loss 
of prosperity for their conventicle. They will 
shake hands with the most obstinate bigotry to keep 
affairs as they are, and it is chiefly by this unholy alli- 
ance of intolerance and worldliness that the church 
is kept so far behind the demands of the times. 



KELIGION IN NEW YORK. 331 

Leaving these two classes as almost hopeless for 
any onward movement, we can with more confi- 
dence appeal to the large body of truly Christian 
men and women that still exist in every sect. These 
persons, the very flower of our church life, whose 
piety and philanthropy save it from stagnation, are 
now quite too often overborne by the obstinacy 
and craft of the two classes before named. Many 
of them are those quiet disciples who avoid conten- 
tion and go on their own blameless way, not covet- 
ing the chief place in the organization; indeed 
often not knowing what the church as a public 
institution is about. Happy in their own private 
belief and the beautiful associations clustering 
about their spiritual home, they put off criticism 
of their ecclesiasticism, will not dwell on the un- 
lovely and depressing signs of its unfaithfulness, 
and are drifted along by a current of which they 
know not the force or the direction. They do not 
see that although they are in the dear old ship, yet 
the hand of an intolerant or artful policy is at the 
helm ; that the vessel is officered by those bold 
ambitious spirits who love to walk the slip23ery 
decks and climb the storm-tossed shrouds ; and that 
while they are occupied in works of benevolence 
below, the old gospel craft is being steered on the 
breakers of intolerance, or the black flag of world- 



332 THE CHUKCHES ; OR, 

liness is run up, and she is turned to a pirate in the 
service of oppression. ISTeither do they know that 
their acquiescence, even their very graces of mild- 
ness and peacefuhiess, are used by these theologi- 
cal wire-pullers to shield themselves from the just 
odium of an indignant c immunity, as a general 
piles up bales of the whitest cotton to ward off the 
shot from the batteries of the enemy. 

Our only hope of Religious Institutions is in 
arousing this large body of true Christians to a 
knowledge of what is done in their name, and a 
determination to assume their due share of influ- 
ence in the policy of the church. If they can be 
persuaded to look at the ecclesiastical intolerance, 
the dogmatic insolence, the inhumanity and the 
divisions of their organized Christianity through 
their own eyes ; can be rallied to a j)ersistent ef- 
fort at their overthrow ; we may hoj)e much for 
religion in E^ew York. We know how distasteful 
the warfare will be ; how quiet men and amiable 
women loathe the agitation attendant on defacing 
corrupt leaders and upsetting a mediaeval policy ; 
how indolence can easily disguise itself in the garb 
of Christian peace ; but we do not understand 
what claim the purest and gentlest have to live 
undisturbed in the service of a Christianity for 
whose establishment Jesus Christ and thousands of 



RELIGION IN NEW TOEK. 333 

his followers have cheerfully gone to death, and 
others have borne the cross during their whole life. 
Does this loving, timid woman who fears the breath 
of slander or the sound of tumult near her home, 
reflect that her Saviour said, " I came not to send 
peace, but a sword ?" Do these quiet men consider 
that just on them who know and feel the divine 
worth of a free religion God lays the martyr's 
mission in these later days ? Tliey are the jycojple 
who should not Tieef still , who should rouse them- 
selves and put forth all the might of holiness in 
them to regenerate these great sects, slowly dying 
with the infection of our materialism. 

We do not ask them to renounce their belief as 
long as they can accept the creed ; but we demand 
that they shall compel their church to renounce 
their absurd and wicked claim of infallibility. "We 
ask them not to desert the ceremonial they have 
so long admired ; but when the priest curses and 
shuns all outside that prayer-book as unconverted, 
let them teach him the Christian charity he has 
forgotten. We do not know where they could find 
a church as practical as it should be if they left 
their own ; but we implore them to help wrench 
the iron foot of their own church from the wreck 
of a down-trodden humanity. If they will always 
stay in their present division of the fold, let them 



334: THE CHURCHES ; OR, 

at least stretch their hands over the bridge and 
grasp the hands of Christians on the other side. 
These persons can yet save onr Protestantism from 
the fate of Roman Catholicism if they awake in 
time. If they will not awake, their very graces of 
peacefulness and piety will become criminal, since 
they hold them back from their duty. It may be 
a privilege to belong to the church, but then it is 
an obligation likewise, and those who enjoy the 
privilege and ignore the difficult duty are not the 
true disciples of Him who walked up Mount Cal- 
vary that we might look upon his cross, and learn 
the grandeur of self-sacrifice for the cause of God 
and man. 

^Ye are disposed to be hopeful, and believe that 
this class will finally be aroused in our churches, 
and the sects be converted to the cause of religion. 
But there is a struggle impending in ]^ew York 
which will throw all previous agitation in the 
shade. The bigotry and the worldliness in these 
great, rich corporations, are not going to subside at 
the bidding of any power ; and only when finally 
rooted out, will they give up the field. The pre- 
liminary skirmish can be witnessed in any week's 
reading of the church journals ; but this is only 
the skirmish preparatory to a war which will 
purify, while it shakes, the churches. God speed 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 335 

all good men, who are toiling in this great reforma- 
tion ; tliej will have sorrow and labor enough for 
their portions in this life, but the favor of God and 
the deep gratitude of humanity will be their sure 
reward. 

Meanwhile, there is a vast body of people who 
are out of the church on principle. They cannot, 
in conscience, be held responsible for its glaring 
evils, and they have no stomach for the warfare 
that must slowly achieve its purification. They 
think the way, both to regenerate the church and 
to advance religion, is to act outside the organized 
ecclesiasticism. They have the right to do so ; and 
the wholesale slander with which this class, now 
far more numerous than the entire body of church 
members, and certainly not inferior in religious 
life, is visited by the regular clergy and the church 
organs, is a wicked outrage on Christian charity. 
But this body of dissenters have their duties to 
perform. It may be a great privilege to have 
parted company with the organized church. Evan- 
gelical and Roman Catholic ; but that privilege is 
bought U23 with the obligation to teach and estab- 
lish a purer religion. Thousands of these dissenters 
seem quite thoughtless of this obligation. So they 
can enjoy their own freedom of thought, expose 
the sins of the old establishments, and drop in once 



336 THE CHUECHER ; OR, 

a montli at a radical convention, or occasionally 
swell tlie crowd tliat throngs the steps of a great 
preacher, their work is done, while their families 
are often left utterly nninstructed in religious 
views and with no Christian associations. 

It is hard to convince those persons, that by this 
course they are perpetuating the reign of bigotry 
and inhumanity in religion. The Evangelical and 
Catholic churches are armies well officered and 
manoeuvered with consummate tact ; and while the 
dissenting host is scattered over the field as now, 
both these armies will conquer by sheer weight of 
discipline. We have no hostility to mass conven- 
tions, and itinerant lecturers on religion and 
reform; in the present state of affairs they have 
their uses, however capable in bad hands of being 
abused. But what does Archbishop Hughes care 
for a mass convention ? He knows it will be over 
in three days; that the public journals will emu- 
late each other in calling it by any name their 
subscribers desire ; that nobody there is resj)onsible 
for anything said or done ; that in any moral crisis 
the endeavor to summon it and make it work would 
be equivalent to marshalling an equal number of 
birds to face a whirlwind. What do the managers 
at the Tract House, and the Bible House, care for 
the system of lectures on reform and religion 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 337 

unsupported by organization ? They have a rich, 
close corporation, a press, can buy shrewd and 
eloquent men to plead their cause, and well they 
know they cannot fall until liberalism concentrates 
its forces in something more potent than a curious 
crowd. Meanw^hile a vast system of visitation is 
preparing to operate on every family in the State, 
and bring the children into the Evangelical Sunday- 
school. Once there, the revival machinery, like a 
great elevator, lifts them into the church, and so 
the work of a generation turns round upon itself. 

The imperative duty of the dissenting force in 
'New York now is organization. It is possible to 
gather the friends of free thought on religion into 
associations for the practice and study of religion. 
Let the best person attainable be selected as 
teacher, and a just freedom of thought be allowed 
in preacher and hearer ; all agreeing to unite to do 
works of benevolence and aid each other towards 
the best wisdom. Out of such associations, would 
finally come a multitude of free churches in the 
State. The children would have religious associa- 
tions, the minds of preacher and people be stimu- 
lated, and when the evil one blew his trumjDct of 
defiance over the land, there would be an answer- 
ing blast from these societies — for the time become 
one — to repel this invasion of public morality. 

15 



338 THE CHURCHES ; OE, 

Alreadj are there some 250 such organizations in 
New York, mostly small in number and resources, 
but all capable, by liberal and religious manage- 
ment, of being j)laced on firm foundations and 
made the centres of a new religious life. There 
are materials for as many more ; and we urge upon 
the friends of religious liberty everywhere the duty 
of concentrating, and putting themselves in the way 
of permanent religious instruction. Even nothing 
more than a weekly assembly for the sincere dis- 
cussion of truths affecting man's origin, duty, and 
destiny, would be a great advance on the disorgan- 
ization of the present time. Thus alone can the 
great mass of truth imparted by conventions, lec- 
tures, and the press, be made available in the 
development of a growing life among the people. 

Could we see at the end of twenty-five years, 
only a few hundred such liberal Christian churches 
in New York, united in the determination to have 
the law of love applied to the life of the State, it 
would be a great aid to the establishments now on 
the ground, l^either Catholicism nor Evangel- 
icism could spring a plot against the freedom of the 
soul in the face of such a watchful organization. 
"While they would both be pricked up to philan- 
thropy and purity by its powerful criticisms and 
example. Meanwhile the friends of a Reformed 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 339 

Christianitj in these churches would succeed in 
beating down the evils that now cripple them. 
Feeble churches would unite on the ground of 
union in life and toleration in belief; the creeds 
would first lose their infallibility, and then become 
only the aids of men in learning of Christ. E'o 
ecclesiasticism would be able to shut up any large 
portion of the people away from the mass of be- 
lievers ; the practical work of reforming the State 
would take the place of useless ceremonial and 
indolent sentimentalism in the churches ; and, year 
by year, the sects and the individual congregations 
would be learning to combine for great public in- 
fluence on the side of the truth. 

"Would it be too much to hope that half a cen- 
tury in this country of rapid grow^th would quite 
modify the condition of the church of ISTew York ; 
and in place of a Babel of warring sects, give us a 
practical union of good men and women for the 
sanctification of society. To doubt that this is 
sometime to come is to condemn Christianity. For 
some religion must be had to regenerate this com- 
monwealth by the power of united love and free 
thought ; and if Christianity cannot do it, the peo- 
ple will have something that will. But Christianity 
can and w^ill do it ; this is Christianity as it came 
from Jesus Christ, when he said Love to God and 



340 THE CHURCHES ; OR, 

man is tlie wliole law, and this is the glorious ideal 
he beheld when he prayed : " That they all may he 
one ; as thou^ Father, art in me, and lin thee, that 
they also onay he one in us / that the world may he- 
lieve that thou hast sent me." 

Christians of the Empire State, is this blessed 
hope to be longer mocked and changed into despair 
through jour intolerance and contentions and un- 
humanity ? Behold the garden God has given you 
to till ; the greatest free State upon earth, rich in 
all materials of a Eepublican society. In your 
hands is placed its destiny. You may say whether 
Christianity here shall exhaust herself through her 
sins and quarrels, till she becomes the prey to a 
new barbarism ; or, freeing herself from present im- 
purities, rise to the controlling power in the souls 
of the people. AYe seek no complicity of church 
with the State ; no concentration of a great eccle- 
siasticism ; no union with any outside interests. 
We only demand that those who love God and 
man shall agree to work together to make this 
magnificent commonwealth the garden of the 
Lord. "What I^ew York shall be religiously is, 
more and more, to determine the fate of Christ- 
ianity in the Eepublic. From our great metropo- 
lis go forth plans and ideas that shape new States 
and mould new orders of society. All the forces 



RELIGION IN NEW YORK. 341 

of Eeligion and L-religion are gathering here for a 
final struggle. Should we behold spiritual despot- 
ism and superstition laying the foundations of so- 
cial and political tyranny, and not be up and do- 
ing, and save our State to a broad and pure Christ- 
ianity ? Save our country to the sacred cause of 
a righteous Liberty; save the Religion of Jesus 
from being driven from our own land to seek in 
distant shores the home denied in this? ISTever 
did a nobler field invite the toil; never will a 
richer harvest reward the fidelity of man. 



XIII. 
THE RUEAL CEMETERY 

OR, 

LIFE AND DEATH. 



Among the burial-places of our State, no one 
may better claim the admiration of the lover of 
beauty than the Albany Rural Cemetery, Situ- 
ated three miles north of the city, upon the west- 
ern bank of the Hudson, it includes, within the 
space of two hundred acres, a variety of surface 
remarkable even in this picturesque region. Its 
shaded avenues climb, by gradual acclivities, to 
lofty eminences, and hence the river is seen 
washing the wharves of two neighboring cities, and 
flowing between tranquil islands, down to the majes- 
tic curve, where it wheels off between a gateway 
of bold headlands. The cities and villages, the 
lovely wooded hills that soar to the opposite hor- 
izon, the distant spectral Catskills, the strange 
blendino^ of human activitv with the bewitched 

343 



34:4: THE RUEAL CEMLTERY ; OR, 

silence of tlie valley, detain the traveller long 
npon these enchanted summits. On descending, 
a new charm apjDears in a series of long ravines, 
extending down the entire slope, through which 
sequestered foot-paths lead among waterfalls and 
miniature lakes, and thread the flowery banks of 
perennial streams. Art has conspired with na- 
ture in the decoration of this beautiful city of the 
dead, which should be visited by every tourist to 
the ancient capital of our commonwealth. 

This Kural Cemetery dates from a meeting of 
the citizens of Albany, on December 31, 1840. 
An eloquent discourse from a venerable clergy- 
man, still living, had aroused the attention of the 
town to the necessity of better accommodations 
for the interment of the dead than the already 
crowded burial-places of the city afforded. In 
April, 181-1, a legislative act of incorporation 
gave a new imiDulse to the scheme ; and on the 
afternoon of October 7th, 1841, the grounds were 
solemnly dedicated, an immense concourse of 
citizens assembling to unite in the consecration. 
During the fourteen years of its existence, it has 
enlarged its boundaries, and is abeady one of the 
most attractive cemeteries in our country. 

At the time of the dedication, -Ihe Rural Ceme- 
tery was almost an experiment in the United 



LIFP] AND DEATH. 345 

States. As early as 1831 tlie first essay was made 
in Massachusetts, simultaneouslj with a like move- 
ment in England ; for previous to 1832 this form 
of interment w^as almost unknown in Eastern 
Europe, though the Oriental nations have always 
inclined to this mode of burying the dead. 
Mount Auburn, near Boston, was the earliest 
result of this great movement of public feeling 
which has covered our States with countless ceme- 
teries. When the Albany inclosure was dedi- 
cated. Laurel Hill, in Philadelphia, Mount Hope, 
in Eo.chester, Greenwood, in I^ew York, with 
Mount Auburn, were its chief competitors for 
public admiration. The act of the legislature 
of 'New York, in 1847, was a great spur to the 
public enterprise in this respect. By this statute 
any company exceeding seven persons, may be- 
come a corporation, holding not more than two 
hundred acres of land, and $5,000, personal estate, 
for cemetery purposes. The proceeds from the 
sale of lots are to be appropriated to the purchase 
and improvement of the grounds. The corporation 
is governed by a board of trustees, elected by the 
owners of lots. The interment of one body in a 
plot of ground makes the spot unalienable. The 
lands are exempt from taxation and liability 
for individual debts ; sacredly guarded from 
15* 



34:6 THE RuiiAL cemeteky; ok, 

personal intrusion, and protected from the en- 
croachments of a vandalic spirit of "improve- 
ment." 

Under tlie impulse of this enactment, a great 
number of cemeteries have been established in 
our State during the past ten years. Few large 
towns are now destitute of such a spot, to which 
the stranger is invited with laudable pride ; and 
every year witnesses the inauguration of new 
enterj^rises of this kind. The contagious enthu- 
siasm of the American people is a great aid in the 
prosecution of any new and worthy undertaking ; 
and although an occasional exhibition of fanatical 
excitement may provoke the disgust of the fasti- 
dious skeptic of Republican institutions, yet who- 
ever beholds the susceptibility of our population 
to noble enthusiasm, will rejoice over it as a provi- 
dential inspiration in the subjugation of a new 
world. Every new cemetery now stimulates a 
neighboring village to greater exertions in this 
direction, and another quarter of a century will 
doubtless see every community in ISTew York sup- 
plied with a beautiful rural inclosure for tlie de- 
parted. 

Already the cities of the dead that crown the 
hills adjoining our metropolis divide the interest 
of the contemplative traveller with the cities of the 



LITE AND DEATH. 347 

living. Within two hours' ride of New York are 
no less than twelve noble cemeteries, two of which 
include four hundred acres each, and most of 
which cover a space of one hundred acres and up- 
wards. The situation of these cem^eteries is un- 
rivalled by any in the world. From the high 
grounds of the most extensive is spread out the 
wondrous view of the bay of ISTew York, with inter- 
mingled cities, shipping, islands, rivers and ocean. 
Others overlook the valley of the Hudson. All 
are beautifully diversified with forest, lakes, cool 
glens and sunny slopes, and all are rapidly advanc- 
ing in artistic merit. Oldest and most populous of 
these is Greenwood — incorporated in 1838, now 
containing 360 acres — a world of loveliness and 
grandeur, wherein one may wander for days with 
ever new objects of attraction challenging his at- 
tention. 

Every friend of a Christian civilization in 'New 
York will rejoice over this growing evidence of 
respect for the departed. For it is not too much 
to say that the character of every people is tested 
by its mode of treating the bodies of the dead. 
The earliest glimpse of antiquity shows the belief 
in the sanctity of the body as a fixed sentiment in 
the race. It has been held by almost every people 
since the world began as a shameful outrage to 



348 THE RUKAL CEMETERY ; OK, 

deny to the temple of the soul a decent respect 
from the living. The Egyptians embalmed their 
dead with great care and built their grandest 
monumental piles for the resting-place of their 
bodies, that when the soul should revisit the world 
it might find its tabernacle awaiting it. The Greeks 
and the Eomans held that the spirit of the unburied 
man was excluded from the Elysian Fields for a 
century ; and enjoined upon the traveller, coming 
by chance upon a dead body, the pious duty of 
throwing dust three times on the inanimate form. 
How touching are those oft-repeated words in the 
elder Scriptures, describing the burial of their patri- 
archs : "He died and was gathered to his people." 
No funeral service ever exceeded in simple gran- 
deur the words the ancient Hebrew was accustomed 
to utter at the grave of the deceased : " Blessed he 
God who has formed thee^ fed thee^ maintained thee^ 
and tahen aioay thy life^ oh^ Dead. He hnows your 
members and shall one day restore your lifeP It 
would seem that burial was the most ancient man- 
ner of disposing of the dead. Tlie custom of burn- 
ing was probably of later origin, and we think the 
early Christians did wisely in retaining the custom 
of the primeval ages. There is something akin to 
the later elaborate Paganisms in the violent and 
sudden annihilation of the body by flame ; there is 



II 



LIFE AND DEATH. 349 

a beautiful harmony with Christianity iu laying 
the deserted form in the ground amid the glory of 
the changing seasons, to slowly yield to the laws 
of nature and be resolved again into her lovely 
forms. 

We could wish that the ancient custom of bury- 
ing outside of towns and cities had never been in- 
vaded ; and we approve the sentiment of the Christ- 
ians of the first five centuries against burials in 
churches and churchyards. The original instincts 
of humanity often point to the most admirable cus- 
toms ; and after three thousand years of burning, 
and hiding in crypts and under pavements, and 
huddling in crowded churchyards, the better sense 
and finest taste of the American people are bring- 
ing us back to the beautiful practice of the old 
Hebrew times, of gathering our dead in cemeteries 
adorned with the tokens of our afiections. For the 
service it has rendered in the education of the soul 
in this the primary school of its immortal existence, 
we will bear the body, no longer needed, to the 
most quiet and lovely place our united hands can 
prepare, and there leave it to mingle with the ele- 
ments, and be wrought again into shapes of majesty 
and grace by those ever-acting laws of nature, 
which are but tlie direct presence of the all-creating 
God. 



350 THE EUKAL ce:meteey ; OK, 

The improved ideas on tlie burial of the dead 
among ns are a cheering sign of our advancement 
in a true Christian civilization. The stern neces- 
sities of a new country, and the divisions into rival 
classes and churches, incident to the transmission 
from a British province to a Eepublican I^ation, 
still appear in the burial-places of many portions 
of our land. The old burying-grounds of the 
country towns in the original northern States, bar- 
ren, bleak, poorly inclosed, and carelessly kept, 
bore witness to the hardships of a pioneer life, 
when a thousand pressing cares and hourly impend- 
ing dangers almost compelled the people to neglect 
the resting-places of their dead. The custom of 
burying in private inclosures is a relict of the old 
divisions of European society, where the families 
of the rich and distinguished, even in death, were 
desirous of impressing the common people with a 
sense of their superiority. The practice of church- 
yard interment grew up from the similar desire to 
keep separate tlie rival churches of Christ even in 
death. "We are no longer compelled to overlook 
our burial-places by poverty, or hardships, or the 
alarms of war; all family distinctions are fast 
merging in the only permanent distinction of cha- 
racter, which a Christian democracy can approve ; 
and the contentious corporations that have too long 



LIFE Al^D DEATH. 851 

waged unholy warfare in the name of Christ, are 
coming to see that the church of God in any com- 
munity is all the Christian people of that place, 
working for the abolition of wickedness and the 
success of holiness in time and eternity. All 
things are tending, at least in the more advanced 
portions of our country, to a broad and pure Ee- 
publicanism founded on the Christian law of love ; 
and what emblem can be more significant of this 
happy tendency than the American cemetery, con- 
structed by the money^ taste, and sentiment of the 
whole people ; containing the dust of the earliest 
generation, removed thither with pious care ; re- 
ceiving the body of every citizen when his earthly 
work is done, and he steps down from his little 
eminence of worldly distinction to mingle with the 
great democracy of death ? 

We would therefore cherish the American 
cemetery as a most significant type of the great 
democratic idea on which our society is founded ; 
as a powerful aid in teaching the people the 
Christian view of life and death ; as a perpetual 
preacher on the relations of those who live in this 
world and in the world of souls. 

How impressive is the testimony of the ceme- 
tery to that true equality of man founded on re- 
spect for his nature ; and that imion of all men for 



352 THE EUKAL CEMETEET ; OR, 

the common welfare, wliicli is tlie foundation stone 
of our national existence. However we may be 
forced by shallow theories or selfish projects to de- 
spise or run over any man or class, in the mad 
struggle of our week-day life, we have only to come 
up here to be converted from the sin of contempt 
Ibr humanity. For in the cemetery all dis- 
tinctions lie level with the dust. Friend and foe, 
rich and poor, wise and dmple, good and bad, 
honored and obscure, are all here. Whatever they 
may have been, or may have done, above ground, 
our gentle mother earth opens her bosom to the 
least -and greatest alike. However separated by 
the accidents of conventional society, E'ature, the 
most illustrious hostess, keeps open house for all. 
From these green graves a voice shall speak to us 
saying : " Man is worthy of respect as man ;" and 
this primal reverence transcends all secondary dis- 
tinctions. Made in the image of a common Father ; 
clothed in the dust of the common earth ; bound 
to every spirit by a common nature ; destined to a 
common immortality ; the soul demands more 
reverence than any man can pay. Of all distinc- 
tions, but one endured beyond these walls ; and 
this only for the common good of humanity. 

Yainly will you seek to exalt the special rank 
of your dead by a show of monumental wealth and 



LIFE AND DEATH. 353 

tlie elaborate recital of eartlilj superiorities. Cover 
the marble tomb of your most famous man all over 
with letters of gold ; what is this to the majestic 
momiment erected here by nature's God to the 
memory of the common humanity that sleeps 
beneath this turf? "Will the flowers bloom more ten- 
derly, or the grass wave more greenly, or the wind 
sing a sweeter song up in the vocal foliage ; or the 
shower, the rain and the dev/ visit more generously, 
or the sounds from hill and valley wander hither 
with more harmonious murmur ; or the blue 
heavens light up by day and glow by night w^ith a 
glory more sublime, above the bed of the mightiest 
than over the corner where sleeps the weakest of 
you all ? Come to the cemetery from the selfish 
competitions that divide man from man, and learn 
from the way our mother treats her every child, to 
reverence all men for their manhood derived from 
God ; learn to live for each other, counting any su- 
periority of native faculty, or culture, or character, 
as a trust to be used for the uplifting of the whole ; 
to make society in this community, in our beloved 
country, one family bound together by respect foi- 
the nature and rights of all ; a republic on earth, 
fit emblem of the kingdom of God in heaven. 

It is a happy thought that places so many of our 
most beautiful cemeteries at easv distances from 



854 THE KUEAL CEMETERY ; OR, 

the centres of activity, and throws them open for 
the constant visitation of the people. Thereby is 
no loss of reverence for sacred things ; but the 
popular views of life and death are insensibly ele- 
vated. The tendency of our insane activity is to 
shut the thought of death altogether from the 
mind ; and this fanaticism for work reacts in a no 
less destructive fanaticism of meditation which 
overlooks this world, and lives in ecstatic dreams of 
a future heaven. A pure and wise Christianity 
unites time and eternity in one complete view of 
spiritual life. The time is past when this world's 
activity can be disparaged or despised in behalf of 
any other world. Look upon this planet to-day, 
virtually bound into one community ; behold the 
vast sweep of its common interests ; see how the 
ordinary occupations of our life are entangled with 
the highest spiritual relations. Science, so long 
despised, has woven her magic wire to demonstrate 
the fact so grandly proclaimed of old, that we are 
all members of one body of humanity. Commerce, 
so often scorned, turns out a pioneer of civilization 
and Christianity. Every blow of the spade or sweep 
of the mower on the uplands and in the valleys of 
Kew York, is felt in the spiritual experience of 
these who dwell in far-off lands. If our only hope 
of religion lies in teaching man to despise this 



LIFE AND DEATH. 355 

world's affairs j ust as he is now becoming endowed 
with angelic powers, and prepared to live a mag- 
nificent life on earth, our hope is vain. But, thank 
Heaven, religion needs no such defence. Christ- 
ianity teaches the glorious fact of one life for every 
soul ; beginning with its emergence from God and 
running on forever ; a life in which the change we 
call death is, perhaps, one of the least important 
events ; a life which is exalted or base, not according 
to the place of occupation, but the quality of the 
motives and the holiness of the character. Religion 
commands the men and women of to-day, not to 
des]3ise this glorious world, or underrate its oppor- 
tunities, but to use it and all its manifold advan- 
tages for the production of that Christian manhood 
and womanhood, which survive all changes of mor- 
tality, and excel all achievements of human power. 
Indeed, it is from this very worldly activity that 
stirs around, and burns witliin the veins of the 
American people, that the most cogent appeal 
arises for faith in the highest beliefs of religion. 
Were 1 challenged by the skeptics to show my 
strong reasons for the faith in God, and moral obli- 
gation and immortality, I do not think I should 
detain him in ray study among the volumes of 
dead divines, but I would lead him to the very 
throbbing heart of this world's activity, to the 



356 



decks of those steamers freiglited with the science 
and burdened with the hopes of two continents. 
There I would stand, as these messengers ploughed 
their way through the waves, breasting an ocean 
of incredulity more chilling than the surges of the 
cold Atlantic, I would bid him mark the demeanor 
of those toil-worn men ; their fidelity, their silent 
and sacred obedience to every command, the faith 
of their leader unsubdued by failure. I would 
ask him to follow that man as he walked up the 
shore of New^foundland, and at night to awaken 
the sleeping electricians by the tidings that the 
continents were united — to behold that j)rocession 
which bore the landed cable up to the station, and 
then bowed in prayer to God ; and I would say. 
Is the instinct that bows great nations as one soul 
to a higher Power at such a time, a delusion ? Is 
the idea of fidelity to a great obligation that nears 
the hearts of the swarming crews of two great 
vessels into one heart, vibrating to every rustle of 
a frail cord, nothing ? Shall the thoughts of gene- 
rations flash along these wires, while the souls of 
Morse, and Field, and Hudson go out forever like 
a wasted taper's flame ? Believe who can, that he 
who thus pierces to the awful deeps of ocean, and 
shoots the lightnings through the sea and over the 
land, is the poor creature of chance ; his soul a 



LIFE AND DEATn. 357 

bundle of nerves, liis duty tlie whim of the day, 
his life a spark struck off the electric wheel of 
being to go out in blackness everlasting; his 
holiest and highest beliefs on which he falls back, 
like a child upon its mother's breast, in the mo- 
ment of his loftiest achievement, the dreams of a 
heated brain, that all things he has made shall 
outlive him ; and he, the lord of earth, drop from 
his own throne into blank annihilation ! Ah ! be- 
cause man is so powerful now, does he need to con- 
fess the God who made him, that, guided by the eter- 
nal laws of goodness, his activity may flow forth to 
Godlike uses, and bless while it astonishes the world. 
How admirable, then, is the sentiment that often 
places the Kural Cemetery within sight of all the 
agencies of our new civilization. Walking among 
its silent graves, you can almost hear the hum of 
the machinery that crowds the adjacent stream ; 
the meadows are sown and harvested beneath 
your eye ; the spires and roofs of the city gleam 
in the distance, or the village streets are vocal 
below ; the near river or blue ocean afar glitter 
with flitting sails ; the thunder and the scream 
of the lightnmg train startle the echoes of innu- 
merable ravines, and swift as thought, fly tidings 
of humanity over the glittering wire. All is life 
around ; oh, yes, and there is no death here. 



358 



Could joii exj)lore tlie secrets of these green 
graves, you would behold the irresistible laws of 
nature changing the body of your friend to the 
grass blade, and the flower-cuj), and the glancing 
foliage. This mute form you buried out of your 
sight as dead, is rising to c::i other life. Why fancy, 
then, that death is a reality ? Why not accej)t the 
lesson of the Rural Cemetery, that the soul is the 
centre of the life that throbs adown the hills, and 
along these river shores ; that this soul is not here 
haunting its body ; that body and soul have gone 
to their own place, the one to blossom in new ma- 
terial shapes, the other to inspire some grander 
sphere of toil in vaster worlds. Come not here to 
muse of death ; for science has confirmed the glori- 
ous doctrine of religion that " death is abolished," 
and there is only perpetual change in life ; but 
come to think deeply and truly of that spiritual 
existence which is the gift of God ; what a glorious 
thing it is ; how it expands into immortality ; how 
it shall be employed, and how far along the road 
to perfection you shall be found, when the angel of 
shadowy countenance leads you through these 
flowery walks on to your future home. 

Come, then, to the Rural Cemetery in every con- 
dition and mood of your earthly existence. Let 
not the child fear to play among these green 



LIFE AND DEATH. 359 

mounds, for perchance some deejD intuition of life 
shall be struck into his joyous spirit like a soft sha- 
dow suddenly darkening the corner of a dancing 
pool. Come here when love first blossoms in the 
unspeakable tenderness of man's and maiden's soul, 
and ask if that thou feelest so tumultuous within 
can look calmly on change and claim its own 
beyond the tomb : come here with your new-born 
darling, and thinly of the angels whose little forms 
lie so Y\'hite and still below : come, man of business, 
and thxink over your plans among these trees, and 
test them by the thought of your eternal life : 
come, mother, weighed down with little cares and 
confused by haunting duties, and ask yourself how 
you shall train your children so that they shall 
water your headstone with tears from the deep 
wells of an undying gratitude: come when pros- 
perity makes high noon in your life, and let these 
silent monitors whisper of rectitude and humility : 
come in adversity, and read the deep meaning of 
sunlight on graves and a blessed Providence be- 
hind every cloud of grief : come and think of your 
duties to your country, and ask, When I am here 
in my narrow house, will man be the better for my 
vote or my policy of to-day? come and deposit 
here the tabernacle of clay through which, as 
through an illuminated transparency, you kncAV 



360 THE RURAL CEMETERY; OK, 

the soul of your neiglibor; and "mourn not as 
those without hope," but go away believing more 
of God, of man, of life everlasting. So shall this 
silent place be more eloquent than the haunts of 
earthly noise and toil; yea, only here shall you 
learn what this bustle on the earth means ; for, 
viewed from this " green hill," this life and all its 
affairs shall appear as the foreground of a spiritual 
existence that fades off into deeper shadows and 
more dazzling lights, and vanishes into the mystery 
of the all-comprehending life of God. 

Thus, by mingling your visits to this sacred 
place with all the occurrences of your daily life, 
you will be taught to live in contact with everlast- 
ing realities; your every action will be adjusted 
to eternal ideas of right; your whole existence 
become a series of variations on the deep and sim- 
ple m.elody of love to God and man. And one 
thing more this cemetery will teach you : the way 
to think of your departed, and the highest mode 
of holding communion with the beloved in other 
states of being. 

We may scorn as we will the perpetual desire to 
cling to those who are translated to other states of 
being; but still the deep heart of humanity yearns 
for the sweet companionship of the absent. It is 
easy to ridicule or reprove the myriad sujDcrstitions 



LIFE AND DEATH. 361 

into wliich our fellow men are hurried by too 
much longing for those who are no longer in the 
flesh ; but while we lop away any growth of rank 
fanaticism, let ns be careful that onr knife of criti- 
cism does not wound the most sacred instincts of 
hnman affection. "We have only to see w^hat a 
mighty power the desire to know the spirit world 
has always been in the individual and society, to 
learn that the only way to banish fanaticism on 
this awful theme, is to supply a true and healthy 
doctrine of our relations to those who have gone 
before us to the unexplored eternity. 

I believe the establishment of a beautiful ceme- 
tery in every village would do much towards ele- 
vating the tone of popular feeling concerning the 
departed. The soothing influence of a visit to a 
place of flowers and fragrant quiet, would do much 
to allay those frantic moods in which we would 
almost break through the bars of our mortality to 
get at those who are away. Here the mourner 
may reflect on the beautiful process of nature by 
which the form of the beloved is changing into 
other shapes of loveliness, and will no longer shud- 
der at the ghastly vision of decaying mortality. 
And here, lifted above the fret and fever of mere 
temporary excitements, the bereaved heart will 
find in the contemplation of the soul itself, the 

16 



362 



spiritual life, and those ideas and facts that endure 
forever, a strength which often is better than the 
mere joy of communing minds. It will then be- 
come more apparent why vv-e are called to part 
company with those on whom we lean so fondly. 
For we shall see that it is < '/len a needful discipline 
of our own spirits to be separated from those who 
were, perhaps, robbing us of our own strength, and 
liindering our best growth through the very excess 
of their attentions. 

Xothing is so good for the soul as love ; but love 
meaiis a great deal more than the sweetest indul- 
gence of the sentiments, and is often strongest and 
purest in the absence of its object. Many a one 
who has done for us wliat no otiier human soul 
could do by its presence, may, after a time, move 
us more potently, and stir a dee]3er place in our 
hearts, from its new home in the spirit world. You 
may scorch the surface of your fields by kindling 
a fire among the forests that shadow them, but 
when you would send a thrill of warmth into every 
vein of the frozen and clammy soil, you must wait 
till God moves the sun a few degrees higher above 
the horizon ; and then, through incomj)rehensible 
distances, over the abysses of space, the level 
beams of light cleave their way to the centre of the 
earth, and the happy valley laughs out in a new 



LIFE AND DEATH. 363 

spring. So, it is not by the loves of tins state of 
being that our cold and selfish hearts are melted 
into a springtime of love and faith, so much as by 
those mighty, nnseen inflnences that come like 
changes of seasons upon the soul ; the tender com- 
passion of the beloved in their heaven of holy 
service; the contemplations of the great and good, 
vrlio move the ^vorld with every throb of their 
memory in the hearts of the generations; the 
Saviour, living and saving to-day more than when 
he dwelt in human form in Palestine ; God, " whom 
no man hath seen at any time," but whom every 
child may know, at all times, through the life of 
obedience and consecration. 

Thus contemplating tlie reasons of our separa- 
tion, and the most elevating influences on our life, 
we shall gradually overcome the half insane desire 
to look perpetually in the faces of our friends. We 
know they live ; if their love was real, we know it 
is immortal, since no reality can ever perish ; we 
may trust God to keep us apart while it is best for 
us to live in solitude ; and when our deepest wants 
crave a communion of souls, they will not be 
absent long. 

So, let us not distract ourselves by vain and 
uneasy attempts to pursue the departing soul into 
the mysteries of its future home. If it be given to 



364 THE KURAL CEMETERY ; OR, 

US to meet again, tlie path is not in tliis direction, 
but rather in the way of a pnre life and patient 
faith in the providence of the Most High. Let no 
man flatter himself he will know his departed 
while bnried in the dust of selfish toil, or plunged 
in the slough of guilty indulgence, or whirling 
down the maelstrom of a godless ambition. Let 
no woman think that her tears and repinings, and 
frantic Avrenchings of will, can force the gates of 
Paradise. Let it not be dreamed that the lost are 
found in the company of half-sensual, half-lunatic 
enthusiasts, who trade in the sacred weakness of 
the afilicted. If we would know our best beloved 
again, and have our souls filled with the joy of 
their blissful presence as gardens are filled with 
the blown odor of fragrant roses, we must prepare 
for the visitation by long service and lofty medita- 
tions. 

" How pure at heart and sound in head, 
"With what divine affections bold ; 
Should be the man whose thought would hold, 
An hour's communion with the dead. 

" In vain shalt thou, or any, call 

The spirits from their golden day. 
Except, like them, thou too canst say, 
My spirit is at peace with all. 

"They haimtthe silence of^he breast, 
Imng-inations calm and fair, 



LIFE AND DEATH. 365 

The memory like a cloudless air, 
The conscience as a sea at rest ; 

" But when the heart is full of din, 
And doubt beside the portal waits, 
They can but listen at the gates, 
And hear the household jar within!" 

We best know our beloved in heaven, when in 
the sternest way of duty; v/hen we have conquered 
our worst temptations ; w^hen we have loved our 
enemy and sacrificed ourself for our friend ; when, 
in some great spasm of public folly and injustice, 
we have stood firm and just ; when we have re- 
solved to live the godly life, and feel that our 
prayer has been answered. We know the illus- 
trious dead only when we are like them, and 
vainly do we insult their memory by words of 
praise, while our lives are traitors to their worth. 
Thus only by living nobly here do we know those 
who are living grandly elsewhere. Life gravitates 
to life, and while we are dead in any low state of 
existence, our communion will only be with " dead 
men's bones, and all uncleanness ;" but, as we rise 
through the spaces of the life in God, at every step 
of our progress we are hailed by some glorious 
spirit, and claim the friendship of some exalted 
soul. The noonday idler on your hill-sides does 
not behold the finest aspect of nature, but the 



366 THE EUEAL CEMETERY ; OR, 

farmer avIio rests upon liis jDlongli to welcome tlie 
morning radiance streaking np the horizon; the 
busy traveller, borne through miles of autnmnal 
glory, the mother who sits by her baby's cradle, 
while the sweet summer moonlight steals through 
the open doors. So do glimpses of Paradise and 
glances from angelic faces come ofcenest to him 
who is most faithful in the nobler duties of life ; 
and plodding along the dusty road of common 
service, his soul leaps up at a vision of far-off vistas 
in heavenly lands. 

Tims shall we consecrate the Rural Cemetery to 
life and death. To the burial of the dead and the 
mstruction of the living. Let every community 
esteem most holy, and guard with watchful care, 
this sacred inclosure. Consecrate it by making it 
every year more beautiful; by holy meditations, 
and lofty ideas of life, and cheerful views of death, 
and solemn resolutions and dedication of the soul 
to eternal things. "What can be a greater adorn- 
ment to any neighborhood than to have, withi]i 
accessible distance, a spot of quiet beauty for the 
burial of the dead, which shall grow more beauti- 
ful as generations pass away; appealing to the 
holiest and calmest sentiments of our being through 
the spectacle of enchanting, natural scenery, and 
the associations of the beloved on earth, now 



LIFE AND DEATH. 367 

beloved in the spirit land. Let the gentle and 
persuasive influences of this gathering-place of the 
departed steal through the neighborhood, like per- 
fumes from the fields visiting the haunts of busi- 
ness and the sanctity of home. Let the life of the 
community be a perpetual consecration of this 
green inclosure by which, as through a flowery 
arch, the generations shall pass avv^ay to another 
clime. And may every town and village in our 
great State found a cemetery worthy its finest taste 
and adequate to its entire needs. Then, looking 
off from the hills that front the stormy Atlantic, 
nestling in the mystic ravines, and climbing the 
varied slopes of the Hudson; reposing upon the 
sun-lit shores of our lakes, blending the exhilara- 
tion of the traveller for pleasure with the solemn 
exaltation of the traveller to heaven; clustering all 
along the blooming valley of the Mohawk, from its 
springs among the western hills to where it 
plunges down its foaming precipice to lose itself 
amid an island labyrinth ; the pride of every little 
village, the noblest sight to every visitor in the 
city ; these fields of the dead will blossom with a 
harvest of ennobling influences for the living; 
proclaiming the equality and dignity of all men ; 
reconciling the life that now is, with the life that 
is to be ; lifting the souls that now tabernacle in 



368 TJIE RURAL CEMETERY ; OR, LIFE AND DEATH. 

clay to inspiring communion witli spirits that have 
put on immortality; and mingling the waves of 
the life that now waters these earthly scenes with 
that river of being, whose billows roll on forever- 
more towards the boundless ocean of Almighty 
love. 



THE END 




THATCHEH 6c HUTCHINSON 

PUBLISH A BOOK OF RARE MERIT, ENTITLED 

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE, with a Glance at the Church of 
the Present and the Church of the Future, being Addresses delivered at the 
Anniversary of the Young Men's Christian Union of New York, on the 13th 
and 14th daj's of May, 1S5S, by Samuel Osgood, D.D., T. J. Sawyer, D.D., 
Rev. 0. B. Frothingham, Rev. Henry Blanchard, Rev. C. Miel, Rev. B. F. 
Barrett, E. H. Chapin, D.D., Henry W. Bellows, D.D., Rev. A. D. Mayo, 
Rev. T. W. IIiGGiNSON, Rev. B. Peters, Richard "Warren, Esq., and Hon. 
Horace Greeley. 
To which is added the Constitution and Rules of Order of the Young Men's 

Christian Union of New York. 

Price— In Paper Covers, $0 25 

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PUBLISHERS' PEEFACE. 

The Anniversary of the " Young Men's Christian Union of New York," on 
the 13th and 14th days of May, 1S58, may justly be considered as marking an 
era in the history of the progress of the Christian Church in America ; inas- 
much as it was the first instance in which so many of the leading minds in the 
various branches of the liberal and progressive portion of the Christian Church 
have met on one common platform, for the purpose of discussing the practical 
bearings of that higher type of Christianity which refuses to be limited by any 
dogma or fettered by any creed. 

The occasion was one of peculiar interest. Such an array of talent as the 
speakers presented, would, under any circumstances, have given assurance of 
a rare literary feast ; but when representatives of different branches of the 
Christian Church, hitherto somewhat antagonistic^ found themselves side by side 
on a broad platform of Christian Charity and Brotherly Love, they could not 
but draw inspiration from the occasion as well as the soul-inspiring themes on 
which they dwelt. 

Believing that the publication of these addresses, in a suitable form for pre- 
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over the land will appreciate and encourage, we have assumed the risk, confi- 
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ian spirit of the age, to extend their circulation. 

The " Rehgious Aspects of the Age," with a glance at the " Church of the 
Present and the Church of the Future," is a subject in which all are,* or should 



be, interested, ar.d this title has been adopted on a.ccount of its peculiar 

adaptation to the contents of the book. 
To accommodate the means and tastes of all, we publish a cheap pamphlet 

edition, and another ou superior paper, and neatly bound in clotli. 

MARTIN THATCHEil, i 
ORREN HUTCHINSON, f Publishers, 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Opening Abbrkss. By Richard Warren, Esq., President of the Union. 

The Catholicity of the Church of the Future. By Samuel Osgood, D.D. 

The Tkuh: Basis of Chrlstian Union By Rev. B. F. Barrett. 

WoRSHrp— Its nkcessitt. By Rev. B. Peters, 

The Chr.siian Spirit of Reform. By Horace Greeley. 

The Truk Grouxps of Christian Union. By Rev. A. D. Mayo. 

AVoMAN IN Chkistian CIVILIZATION. By Rev. T. W. Higginson. 

Christian U.mos By Rev. C. Miel. 

Influence of Theological Theories upon the Practical Conduct of Lifb. 

By Henry W. Bellows, D.D. 
The Religion of Fe^r and the Religion of Love. By Rev. Henry Blanchard. 
Proper Treatment of the Infidel Tendencies of our Day. By Rev. 0. B. 

Frothingham. 
True and false Views of Evangelical Religion. By T. J. Sawyer, D.D. 
Tendencies of the Age Friendly to Larger Vikws uf Christianity. By E. 

11. Chapin, D D. 
Appendix. Conclusion of Dr. Osgood's Address, in the form of a Letter to the 

Publishing Committee. 



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" They treat of the most vital questions which can engage men's minds or 
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3 

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